


All Eyes Are On You Now

by Onefalsestep



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-03-01 05:30:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13288011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onefalsestep/pseuds/Onefalsestep
Summary: Quo Vadimus saved Sports Night, but Dan Rydell went out to L.A. anyway. Casey struggles to make sense of his departure as he watches Danny on the air every night, and Natalie offers him some advice.





	1. i know i'll hold this loss in my heart forever

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally done!!! All feedback is greatly appreciated, since Sports Night fandom can be a lonely (but lovely) place, considering how long it's been since the show was on the air.

Casey couldn’t take his eyes off of Dan.

Everyone else in Anthony’s was focused on the ill-fated drinking contest taking place between Kim and Elliott, but Casey’s eyes were glued to the TV screen. Danny’s show was on, and Casey hadn’t missed a single episode. They reran it at 1 AM every night, so Casey either watched it at home or at the bar, insisting that Jack keep the closed captioning on so that Casey could still get the flavor of Danny’s script.

“Chug! Chug! Chug!” Dana’s voice was deafening in his ear. Casey winced, and leaned away, watching Danny bring out his first guest. The job Danny had landed in L.A. wasn’t the one they’d offered both him and Casey, but it had proved to be a much better fit. Quo Vadimus had given Danny free rein with a new show after he’d met with Calvin a few times and convinced him that a _The Daily Show_ -type format with a sports focus and access to L.A. stars could be a ratings hit. And he’d been right. Danny had thrived once they’d taken off the fetters, and Casey wasn’t surprised. Dan did best when he was doing his own thing for his own reasons. He’d never been good at conforming to other people’s expectations. That was Casey’s job.

Casey took another swig of his beer and glanced back at the table, where Kim was soundly kicking Elliott’s ass. Natalie was staring at him.

 _What_? he mouthed, and she looked down at the table. That was weird. She was sandwiched between Will and Jeremy, so he couldn’t pursue the matter without making it weirder. He went back to watching Dan, and trying not to think about how long it had been since they’d last been behind a desk together.

He knew exactly how long it had been, of course. Down to the minute. Six months, three weeks, two days and one hour, seventeen minutes, and a handful of long, long seconds. He hadn’t been able to stop the clock from running in his head, not since Danny had gone away. It felt like a countdown, though he couldn’t say what it might be marking.

Onscreen, Danny cut to commercial. Casey needed some air. He left the cheering behind him, stepping out into the alley, where the cool breeze hit him and he felt better, for a couple of seconds. Then the door swung open and Natalie emerged, which caused Casey to groan inwardly, because he knew she was going to bring up Dana.

It had been Natalie’s crusade lately. “It’s been more than a year since the dating plan!” She had hounded Casey through the hallways all of last Wednesday. “You’re both ready. You’re both single. You’ve got to seize the moment, Casey! _Carpe Dana_!”

“Natalie, I know Human Resources generally chooses to overlook our antics, but I still don’t think you should be telling me to seize my boss. Or your boss, for that matter.” He yanked open the door to his office, hoping to find some refuge there, but Natalie followed him in. “It’s not a good idea. We tried, we failed, we both moved on. She’s okay with it, I’m okay with it, and the only one who’s not okay with it, in fact, is you.”

Natalie was shaking her head. “You’re not okay with it.”

“I am.”

“Casey, you’re not! You’ve been moping around here for months. And you’ve got to act soon, because Dana told me—” She slapped her hand over her mouth, and Casey raised his eyebrows.

“Dana told you what?” Natalie shook her head harder, backing away. “Natalie, what did Dana tell you?”

Natalie stomped her foot. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything!”

“Well, you have. So spit it out. Why’s there a deadline all of a sudden?”

“Because—” Natalie sighed. “Because Calvin told her he has feelings for her. And Dana’s trying to figure out how she feels and if it’s even ethical for her to reciprocate, although she was all in when it was going to be you dating _your_ boss, so I think she’ll probably come to the conclusion that it’s fine.” She reached out and shook him by the shoulders. “So that’s why you have to act! She needs to know how you feel about her, Casey. This is your last chance.”

He looked heavenward. “Natalie, for the last time—” He sucked in a long breath. “It’s not meant to be. We’re friends, and I want us to stay friends. I’m not in love with Dana. I thought I was. We’ve known each other a long time, and we never acted on things, and so there was always this sense that we should, or we would, one day, when the stars aligned. But they did, and we still couldn’t get it together. We need it let it go. You need to let it go. Please, for all of our sakes.”

Natalie’s fingers dug into his shoulders. “I still don’t believe you.”

“Fine.”

“You’ve got the look of the lovelorn.”

“Whatever you say.”

She had turned on her heel and left him alone in the office, and to her credit she hadn’t said another word about Dana. Until tonight, two full days later, at least.

He kept staring out at the street as he heard her close the door to the bar behind her. “Natalie, if you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say, can we skip to the end? I do still want to see if Kim literally drinks Elliott under the table.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say.” She came to stand beside him.

“You’re going to tell me I’m in love with Dana. That I need to stop lying to myself, that I can’t wait anymore—“

“You’re not in love with Dana.”

He blinked. “That’s right. I’m not.”

“You’re not in love with Dana, because you’re in love with Dan.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Then you’re crazy.”

“I’m not crazy. You’re in love. And you haven’t been on a date in months. Six months, in fact. You look like someone stole your lunch money all the time now, except when you’re watching Dan’s show. Which you do religiously, by the way, and then dissect with anyone who will stay around long enough to listen.”

Casey’s throat was starting to tighten. “I’m being supportive, Natalie. It’s his first show on his own. Of course I’m watching it.”

“There’s being supportive, Casey, and then there’s being obsessed.”

He gulped, like a fish. He couldn’t help it. Natalie wasn’t making any sense, and yet somehow she was making all the sense in the world.

Had she been talking about anyone else—any _woman_ —Casey would have had to admit that the puzzle pieces fell together. That he had been feeling this yearning, this indefinable incompletion, for going on half-a-year now. That he didn’t feel any desire to meet anyone new, that the prospect of embarking on a new relationship mostly sounded exhausting, not exciting. But he was straight, and Danny was straight-ish, although Casey had never dug too deeply into what that percentage might be despite the few vague allusions Dan had made to finding men attractive. He missed Danny, sure. He missed him a lot, but that was to be expected. They’d worked together a decade, and seen each other nearly every day for the last few years. This was a readjustment period. He’d get past it.

He couldn’t think, though, standing here, of how he might go about doing that. Not when the only thing he could imagine making him feel better was Danny walking through the doors of the bar, opening his arms for a hug, and telling Casey he’d finally come home.

“It’s okay, Casey.” Natalie’s voice was soft. “We love you both. Nothing would change if things between you two did. You know that, right?”

“Even if I—Natalie. Even if I did, even if I felt the way you’re saying I feel—which I’m not saying I do—he doesn’t. He couldn’t. He’s head over heels in love with Rebecca.”

“And then she showed up, and he didn’t call her. He moved to L.A. instead. He left her, Casey. He didn’t love her.”

“He left me too.” The words came out more broken than he’d meant them to sound.

“Oh, Casey.” She put her hand on his arm, and somehow that was too much. The tears started to prick his eyes, and everything he’d been struggling not to feel for the last few months came swimming to the surface.

He didn’t know where the words were coming from, but he couldn’t seem to stop them. “How could he do that, Nat?” God, he was rhyming. Maybe he really was in a bad place. “How could he leave, now? We saved the show. _Dana_ saved the show. And then he walked away like none of that mattered, like he didn’t even—” He collected himself, aware that at any moment someone else could walk out of the bar, and he didn’t want to have to explain to them any part of what he was feeling. “He left all of us, Natalie. What I don’t understand is why.”

“I’m sure he had his reasons.” She rubbed Casey’s arm reassuringly. “But I’m also sure he cares about you more than anything, Casey. And you need to talk to him. Even if he doesn’t feel the same way, he needs to know.”

Casey shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. Whatever I’m feeling—and again, for the record and the ones in the back, not saying I’m feeling what you say I’m feeling—it’s for me to get through. I don’t need to drag Danny into this.”

“Casey, can you really imagine going six more months without seeing him? He didn't even come back for the holidays, and he hasn't said anything about visiting this summer. Are you telling me you can really stand to live without Dan for a year? Because I don’t believe it. I look at you, and I don’t believe it one bit.”

He shivered. The night air seemed too cold, all of sudden. “You might be right about that.”

“I know I am.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

Her lips quirked into a smile. “Go to him.”

He couldn’t help but smile back. “What should I do once I get to him?”

“Be a man.”

“This would actually be easier if I wasn’t.”

She laughed, squeezing his arm. “It’s going to be okay, Casey.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you. And I know Dan. And I know you always get it together, in the end. Even if you have to act like idiots for a while to get there.” She released his arm, nodding towards the bar. “Come on. I know you don’t want to miss the end of his show.”

He followed her back into the warmth and the noise, and tried to think of how he was going to tell Dana that he needed a few days off to go to L.A., and what the hell he was going to say to Dan when he got there.


	2. you can't just hop a plane and come and visit me again

It turned out Natalie had already laid the necessary groundwork with Dana for the L.A. trip by the time Casey got to her. He was sure Natalie hadn’t told her the full story—he couldn’t imagine their interaction going as pleasantly if Natalie had—but he imagined she’d said something about Casey missing Dan, and needing to get out of a rut, and _seriously_ lacking sufficient Vitamin D after all this rain New York had been having. “Go,” Dana had told Casey with a smile. “Tell him we love him, and that he better keep giving us that ratings boost from his lead-in. No slacking.”

Casey thought about writing to Danny. He thought about calling him. He got as far as picking up the phone and even opening his little-used email account before he abandoned the idea, and went through with his original plan to buy a ticket to L.A. instead. What he had to say needed to be said in person, if it could be said at all. He couldn’t script it out—every time he tried, words failed him, which wasn’t an experience he could remember having. He couldn’t ask Danny to come back: Danny was settling into L.A., and doing great. He couldn’t even tell Danny _why_ he wanted him to come back, except that he needed him to, except that nothing was quite as good with Danny gone. He hadn’t realized how much of his enjoyment of work, his energy for the long days and the headaches and the stress, came from Dan, or how much he’d miss Dan’s presence the rest of the time. Sure, he could still give Danny a call, theoretically, still shoot the shit and break down every play of the latest Jets game: but he didn’t. They’d tried to talk in those first few months, and still caught each other at the right time occasionally, but with the time difference and both of their schedules there was never time for leisurely conversation. And it was hard enough to get a straight answer out of Danny about anything in person: with an entire country between them, it was absolutely impossible.

So Casey boarded the flight from JFK to LAX without giving Danny any warning about his arrival. He knew Danny would be in town. He’d asked around and confirmed Dan hadn’t requested any time off, not that Casey thought he would have his first year in his new gig. He couldn’t say exactly why he felt he had to surprise Danny, except that Dan tended to duck and weave if he knew an emotional punch was coming. He didn’t want Danny to have time to prepare, to shore up his story. He wanted to know exactly why Danny had left, in all its messy, unvarnished truth. He wanted Dan to look him in the eyes, and tell him he wasn’t coming back, so that Casey could start figuring out how to move on.

He spent his time in the air copyediting the in-flight magazine and trying not to think about the wider implications of his conversation with Natalie the other night. Yes, she was right about the downturn in his mood being tied to Dan’s departure. Yes, she was correct about Casey’s inability to imagine several more months of life without Dan. But all of that didn’t add up to being in love with Dan—not necessarily. He loved Danny: he’d admitted that to himself after the Seder, because it was pretty impossible to tell someone they’d been at the best thing in your life for the past decade and then pretend a kind of collegial affection was all you felt for them. But there was a line between love and _in_ love, and Casey had only ever crossed that line with women. Well, with one woman, really: with Lisa, who he couldn’t even remember feeling truly in love with after all their bitter years.

Danny had essentially told Casey that Lisa had never loved him at all: was it possible that Casey hadn’t loved her? Hadn’t felt whatever other people felt when they talked about it, that blissful certainty that meant they’d found some missing piece of themselves? Sure, he and Dan fit. They fit about as well as two people could, and the fact that they’d had any tension at all was a testament to how much they’d gone through together, how well they knew each other and what buttons to push in a fight, or just the words that needed to be spoken in apology. But love, that kind of love, meant attraction. Sex. A longing that—okay, possibly a longing that could drive someone to jump on a plane and rush to the opposite coast. Sure.

He groaned, resting his forehead against the back of the seat in front of him. His elderly seatmate shot him a look. “I’m fine,” he reassured her. “Not going to be sick or anything. I’m just—never mind.”

She huffed and turned towards the window, and Casey leaned back in his seat. He couldn’t deny that Natalie nudging open the door to thoughts about Danny that were less than platonic had resulted in certain effects. Certain effects including at least one explicit sex dream that he was pretty sure had been about Danny, although he couldn’t recall the details in the morning. But he’d had sex dreams about men before. He’d once had a (deeply regrettable and never to be spoken of) sex dream about Mark McGwire in a locker room that was somehow also the science lab of his high school, for God’s sake. It didn’t mean anything. It was just his sexless psyche working with whatever input was available, whether it fit his preferences or not.

At least, that’s what he thought, not having seen Danny for six months. Not being able to recall, sitting here beside a woman who smelled like cough drops and looked like she thought he might murder her, what it felt like to be around Dan. How it made his body feel. He’d always felt at his happiest and most comfortable around Danny, save for the dark age surrounding Draft Day. He’d spent days on end with him in a small office for multiple years, and while having Danny nearby had been a welcome thing, he honestly couldn’t say if it had been anything more than that, if he’d ever found his eyes lingering on Dan for a little too long, if he’d ever longed for Dan to come a little closer. (How much closer could they really get, sitting five feet away from each other for hours on end?) Now, he guessed, he’d have a chance to find out.

“We are now beginning our descent into Los Angeles.” Casey closed his eyes as the pilot’s voice floated down from the speakers above. Sunlight flickered across his closed lids. “Local time is 5:54 PM. The temperature is 76 degrees, the weather’s fine, and the beaches are beautiful. Welcome to California, folks.”

* * *

Casey got off the plane with the carry-on roller suitcase he’d brought and considered, for one long moment, turning right back around. What was Dan going to think? Maybe he had plans, plans for which he’d prefer that Casey not be around. Maybe he was seeing someone, and he would have to awkwardly attempt to include Casey in the weekend he’d set up for Tricia, or Tara, or Tiffany, or Tanya-Tracey-Tia-Tamera.

But he didn’t turn around. He forced himself to walk on, and he caught a cab at the taxi stand. And when the words came out of his mouth, he knew he wasn’t going to waste a moment. “QVN Studios, next to the Staples Center.”

* * *

 

QVN didn’t have full run of the studios: they were currently sharing the space with a local L.A. station while they were expanding their West Coast operation. But Casey found a security guard who not only recognized him but asked him for an autograph (“I already got Dan’s, and you’re the _Sports Night_ duo, man!”) and let him through to where Dan was filming _Sports Daily With Dan Rydell_.

He slipped in through a side door during the commercial break, unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of the rearranging of the set. He knew the format: Danny always did an intro, a top story (or two, occasionally throwing to field reporters), and an interview before closing out the show with a monologue. Casey glanced at his watch: 7:49 PM (or 10:49 on the East Coast, where Bobbi Bernstein would be getting ready to fill in for Casey alongside Thomas Riley, one of the rotating anchors they’d been trying out while auditioning permanent replacements for Dan). This would be the last segment, then.

Awkwardly maneuvering his suitcase behind him, he found a spot against the wall and waited for the show to gear back up. The whole scene—the murmur of the cameramen, the bright lights and buzzing energy—was familiar enough that it made him feel like he should be waiting for the signal to get back to his desk to come at any moment. He tried to think about how long it’d had been since he’d been in a studio like this without being on camera himself.

A motley crew made up of the make-up people and production team had been blocking Dan when Casey walked in, but now the small crowd parted and Casey got his first good look at him. Dan looked good. He looked tan, and relaxed, and like he’d been hitting the gym with far more motivation than Casey had been able to summon lately.

The studio quieted, and Casey saw Dan snap back into on-air mode as he got his cue. “Thanks for not changing the channel, Mom.” He served up one of his signature Dan grins. “We’re back and trying to decide how we’re going to work through the pain of this pitiful week in sports over the weekend here at _Sports Daily_. Is there any quantity of tequila that can remove the sting of that Spurs defeat? Is there any amount of pool time that can revive the spirit of Florida State? And can any amount of In N’ Out erase the image of that Bill Buckner-like move from new Mets recruit Shawn Davis? Not for this New York boy, there isn’t. But I’ll probably drown my sorrows in milkshakes anyway.”

Casey marveled at the smoothness of Dan’s delivery, at the chatty, engaging confidence he exuded, even without a co-anchor to play off of at his side. Dan was glowing. Had Dan always glowed? Maybe Casey had never noticed. He glowed, and he spoke with the same sharp, quick inflections Casey knew so well, and Casey could tell, standing there, why everyone kept their eyes on Dan, why he himself couldn’t possibly look away. Dan was magnetic when he was on, and he was _on_. All eyes were on Danny now, and Casey couldn’t have been prouder.

He left his bag leaning against the wall and crept a little closer, still out of Dan’s sightlines. The grip smiled at him: he could tell she recognized him from _Sports Night_. “Go on,” she mouthed, urging him forward. He stepped up to where he could feel the reflective heat of the lights from the set on his face. Dan was winding down. “So that’s it, my friends. Stay tuned for _Sports Night_ , where Bobbi Bernstein’s filling in for Casey McCall, who presumably got lost trying to find his way out of Barney’s while shopping for socks, and join us next week, when we’ve got—” His gaze shifted, and finally locked, for only a moment, on Casey’s face.

None of the home viewing audience would have noticed, so swiftly did he recover, but Casey knew how long and loaded that single moment was, how long Dan’s eyes had lingered. Dan had looked shocked, and Casey wasn’t sure that was a good thing. He swallowed and watched Dan close out the show, backing up a few steps to find the safety of the wall again.

Afterward Dan went through all the brisk, familiar motions of disentangling himself from the desk and sprang to his feet. He still wasn’t really looking at Casey. But when he finally got to where Casey stood, when he finally lifted his eyes to Casey’s face, both of them broke into big, uncontainable grins. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Casey affirmed. He felt like he’d been knocked a foot or two back by the force of Danny’s gaze. Dan’s eyes were always intense, probing in a way Casey sometimes found unsettling but mostly loved. When you had Dan’s attention, you had all of it. When he cared about you, you knew it. Casey had missed that. He’d missed the sight of Dan’s face, and the nearness of him, the way the world suddenly seemed to make sense again with Dan standing in front of him. _Not proof_ , he hissed to the invisible Natalie on his shoulder.

 _Uh-huh_ , she shot back, crossing her arms. _Because every straight guy loves hugging his best friend that much_.

Dan spoke up abruptly, in his very Dan way, interrupting Casey’s imaginary conversation. “Did you eat?” Casey shook his head. “The best tacos in L.A. are right around the corner. Well, I think they’re the best tacos in L.A., and no one has had the heart to disabuse me of this naïve East Coast notion. Let’s go.”

Casey followed Dan to the parking garage, where they both slipped inside his red Dodge Camaro. “Nice ride.”

“It’s my midlife crisis car.”

“You’re 32.”

“I’m getting a head start. I’m an overachiever.”

“That you are.”

“It’s a rental. Until I can get the Volvo out here. Thinking I might do a cross-country trip next year.”

“Ah.” Casey kept his eyes on Dan’s face as Dan started the car, because he was so close, and so real, and after all these months without Danny by his side Casey wasn’t sure he quite believed it. He wanted to reach out and touch Dan’s cheek, to brush that smooth skin with the back of his knuckles, but he didn’t dare, and tiny Natalie had _all_ kinds of things to say about _that_ impulse. He clasped his hands in his lap, feeling faintly ridiculous as he looked out the window, trying his best not to freak Dan out by constantly reassuring himself of Dan’s presence. “So we have to drive to this taco place? We can’t just walk?”

“It’s L.A., my friend.” Dan turned the wheel, guiding them out of the garage. “We have to drive everywhere.”

Casey leaned back in his seat. “So how do you like it? Think you’ll ever have an L.A. renaissance?”

Dan sighed. “Casey, I haven’t been here long enough for a renaissance. A renaissance is years in the making. A renaissance requires disappointment, nostalgia, a certain je ne sais quoi—“

“You can’t just say ‘je ne sais quoi’ when you don’t know what you’re saying. It’s not like ‘TK.’”

“—A certain je ne sais quoi, a certain lived-in kind of love that I only share with one city in this great country—nay, this entire world.”

“You really miss New York, don’t you?”

Danny glanced over. “I do.” He pulled into the parking lot of a Mission Revival-style building with red tiles on the roof. “But it seems a little bit of New York has come to me.” He put the car in park without undoing his seatbelt. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, Case, but: what are you doing here? Is Isaac okay? Is the show okay?” He examined Casey’s expression. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Hey.” Casey put his hand over Dan’s, not really thinking about it. They’d traded small touches like this all the time, but now the motion felt charged. He pulled back, and Dan cocked his head. “Everything’s fine. I just…” He swallowed again. Why did his throat feel parched all of a sudden? Was the air in L.A. really that dry? “I wanted to, uh, surprise you. We miss you, back home.”

Dan didn’t take his eyes off Casey’s face. “We do, huh?” He reached down to undo his seatbelt, finally shifting his gaze away. “How long are you here for?”

“Three days.”

“You need a place to stay?”

“No, I’m staying at the Biltmore.”

“Nice.” Dan glanced at the suitcase in the backseat. “You check in?”

“Not yet.”

“We’ll swing by there after, then. Before I show you what you’re missing from L.A. nightlife, which mostly consists of driving around trying to find parties that have just ended by the time you get there.”

Casey laughed and followed Dan out the car. It only occurred to him a few minutes later, as they were ordering drinks and a trio of tacos each, that Danny hadn’t said he’d missed Casey too.


	3. i just want back in your head

Casey checked into the hotel quickly, running up to stash his bags in the room while Dan hung out in the lobby, flipping through an old copy of _Sports Illustrated_ he’d picked up somewhere. Then they made their way to the Hollywood Hills, taking a vertiginous route that caused the lights of the city below to blur and shift before Casey’s eyes, leaving behind glowing patterns in the dark. He closed his eyes as he and Dan chatted, and he could still see them, the afterimages of brightness, fading to black.

They talked about Dana, and Natalie, and Jeremy and Kim and everybody else on the show, but Dan was quieter than usual, Casey thought. Less prone to banter, at least for the last hour or so. Or was this just California Dan? Tanner, and more taciturn too?

“The guy we’re going to see,” Dan said, steering the car up a hill towards a row of midcentury ranch houses, “is a minor producer who likes to think he’s major. He overcompensates for his relative mediocrity by throwing the best parties in town, which cost him much more of his paycheck than he’d ever admit to.”

“How’d you get on the invite list?”

“Got him Lakers tickets, of course. Courtside for the play-offs. And I promised not to tell anyone I’d done him the favor, so he could pretend he was a big shot who drops that kind of cash all the time.”

“You do know how to make friends.”

“Hey, it’s how things are done out here.” Dan pulled into the drive of one of the houses, a glass and wood panel construction that was clearly intended to project an air of glamour but was just a touch too dated to be convincing.

Dan slid out of the car, heading for the door. Casey tagged along behind him, not loving the feeling he’d been getting in the last few hours of being nothing more than Danny’s loyal and neglected hound, nipping at his heels.

He wanted Danny’s attention. He wanted Danny to talk to him. And he knew it would take time, that they’d been apart for months and needed to get their rhythm again, but something felt off. Dan wasn’t looking right at him much. He hadn’t given Casey any opening for the conversation Casey wanted to have with him, and when Casey had suggested alternate nighttime plans—hang out at a sports bar near the hotel, maybe, or even just watch a game in Casey’s room—Dan had brushed him off, telling him not to be such an old man. “It’s your first night in L.A., Casey. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t show you a good time.”

Dan slipped into the party, which was still an hour or two away from being in full swing, and started to flirt with everyone in sight, acting like he’d known all of these impossibly skinny, polished people forever. “Elena, how you been? Carmen told me they’ve been working you to death over there. Tell them television isn’t supposed to be such hard work. Mark, your Trail Blazers are looking good, man! They might go all the way, but I still wouldn’t bet against the Lakers if you were making me put money on the table. No, no, I don’t have insider knowledge, just a feeling. Seriously! You can get me another drink, but I’m not spilling any secrets. I have none to tell.”

Casey leaned into it as much as he could, turning on the television star charm that was second nature, playing the wing man to make Dan seem even wittier and smooth. He hadn’t seen Danny do this as much in New York, though. When Dan felt sullen in the midst of some gathering in Manhattan, it showed. When Dan didn’t want to try, didn’t want to impress anyone, didn’t have it in him to make scintillating small talk, he shut down. He let Casey take the lead. Casey suddenly wondered if he’d been holding Danny back all along, if Danny had been capable of this unforced ease with relative strangers for years, and Casey had somehow stifled it.

The thought chilled him. He withdrew from the circle of hangers-on whose attention Dan held rapt, sneaking off just like Danny used to do when certain social interactions went on too long for his liking. Somehow in his head “Danny” was the version of his best friend he’d known in New York, but this was definitely “Dan”: Dan the Man, Dan the master of charm, Dan the slick L.A. sportscaster without a care or a soul-crushing anxiety in the world. Dan who didn’t seem to have much time or energy to spare for the old co-worker who had showed up out of nowhere, who maybe should never have come at all.

Casey wandered the perimeter of the party, feeling lost. It was filling in more, with a few celebrities he recognized but felt no urge to approach. He got a drink from the bar—a strong vodka tonic, which somehow matched his mood—and found a less-trafficked spot near the door to the bedroom, which the host had left open, presumably to show off his garishly expensive linens.

“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

The voice came from somewhere to his left and about a foot below his ear. He looked down and saw a cute, curvy redheaded woman smiling up at him, a glass of champagne in her hand.

He smiled back. “Nothing but jet lag. I just flew in from New York. It’s the middle of the night my time, so the fact that I’m not curled up in there” –he pointed his thumb over his shoulder, towards the bedroom— “should impress you enough.”

She laughed, a pretty, resonant sound, and Casey immediately wanted to make her laugh again. “So are you in the industry?” she asked. “Maybe TV? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere.”

“Are you a sports fan?”

“I am not. Although I’ve fed some of the big teams around here.” Casey cocked his head. “I’m a caterer. High-end craft services for sets, live television events, all that jazz. So I know everyone here who claims to be doing Atkins but sneaks extra rolls to their trailer when they think no one’s looking. I could ruin this town.”

Casey chuckled. “L.A. felled by a dieting scandal. Who could have predicted it?” He rubbed his neck, feeling a prickling sensation rise along his skin. “So how’d you get into that? Was it always your dream to make dinner for Meryl Streep?”

“Not exactly.” She started to tell him about her time at the Culinary Institute of America, and the ex-boyfriend she’d followed to L.A., and while Casey found her engaging and beautiful and certainly more worth talking to than anyone else he’d met at this party, he couldn’t seem to track her words. His gaze wandered, past her shoulder, and a shiver ran down his spine as he confirmed the cause of his distraction.

Danny was watching him. From the other side of the room, through the ebb and flow of the passing crowds, Dan’s eyes were focused on Casey’s face. Dan used to watch him a lot, but Casey had forgotten the feeling. He could never tell what Dan was thinking when he looked at Casey this way, with that stare. Dan did it to other people too, on occasion, but nowhere near as frequently as he did it with Casey.

Casey turned his attention back to the redhead. When he looked back up, Dan was gone.

* * *

 

Casey found Dan later, by the pool. He’d been looking for him for a while, but the dimmed lights and influx of new partygoers had made Dan hard to find. He was staring into the water, the eerie bluish light flickering across his sharp features. The jumble of Dan’s face shouldn’t necessarily have made sense, but somehow it all added up perfectly, making him attractive enough to be a TV star and to get pretty much anyone he wanted.

Except Rebecca, thought Casey, sitting down in one of the wicker loungers next to Dan, his balance a little unsteady after the three vodka tonics he’d downed. How much of Dan’s leaving New York had to do with Rebecca? Had he really needed to switch coasts to get away from her?

“So is this how you usually spend Saturday nights?” Casey spread his arms wide, taking in the expanse of the party around them. “Drinking, dancing, and picking up models?”

Dan laughed, eyes still on the pool. “There has indeed been the occasional model.”

“Anyone serious?”

“No.”

“Do you want there to be?”

Dan turned his head, looking at Casey. “Do I want there to be someone serious?”

“Yeah.”

Dan kept looking at him, and Casey couldn’t shake the feeling that Dan was about to call him a moron, for some reason. He scrambled for a follow-up. “I mean—Rebecca. Everything that happened with her. Are you feeling okay about that?”

Dan spread his hands. “Nothing happened with her. She moved back to New York. Good for her. That has nothing to do with me.”

“Danny—”

“Casey, seriously, I’m over Rebecca. If I was ever even under her.” He blew out a breath as he caught Casey’s stifled laugh. “You know what I mean. Rebecca’s old news. I was—projecting. I thought she was something she wasn’t, someone who could make me happy. But she wasn’t, and I’ve moved on, and that’s the end of that.”

Casey wondered if Dan was still calling Abby, still doing therapy by phone, or if he’d found someone new to see in L.A. He wasn’t sure anyone not currently engaged in therapy would have used the term “projecting.”

He shifted his gaze from Dan’s face to the surface of the pool. “So if it wasn’t her, what was it?”

“What was what?”

“What made you leave?”

Dan was silent a long time. Long enough that Casey looked back up, ready to ask again, even though it had been hard enough to get the words out the first time. Dan was staring at the sky now, like he was a couple of seconds away from asking God to give him strength. “Casey…you know why I left. You told me to go. Remember that?”

“I told you to go when we were going to lose the show. And then we didn’t. QVN saved it. And you still left.”

“You told me I could do it alone. You told me I _should_ do it alone.”

“I—” Casey closed his mouth. He _had_ told Dan to go. He’d told him to go not only because their jobs were on the line, but because Danny was ready. Dan needed to get past his self-doubt and see that he was just as much of a pro as Casey was. Casey had wanted that for him, and now Dan had it, and Casey should have been nothing but glad for him.

And yet. And yet, at the time, back then, all those months ago, he hadn’t known Dan leaving would break his heart. He hadn’t known it would feel this way, leave him reeling, leaving him feeling like he had no idea who he was anymore. Could he take it back? Rewind, to that moment at his desk when he had told Dan to go, and Dan had stared at him a long time, his eyes still on Casey’s face even as Casey pretended not to notice?

“You told me to go.” Danny’s voice was quieter now. “And I went. And it’s been great, Case. Better money, better timeslot, better me. My writing’s never been better, man. This is where I’m supposed to be.”

 _You’re supposed to be with me_ , Casey thought, a little shocked by the thought. And hurt, too, by Danny’s assertion that his writing now was better than it had ever been with Casey. Casey had watched every episode of Dan’s show, and it was good, but _Sports Night_ had been damn good, too. He didn’t know why Dan wanted to gloss over that. He couldn’t understand how Dan could be so glib.

He stood, crossing over to where Dan sat and crouching down in front of him. “Danny.” Dan looked down at him, and his eyes softened. At least Casey thought they did. “You didn’t really leave just because of what I said, did you? Because you know I never would have said that in anything but desperate times. I didn’t want you to leave, Danny. I didn’t want you to, and I—” He reached out, setting his hand on Dan’s. Firmly. A decision. “I’m having a hard time without you now.”

Danny’s eyes were dark, flickering with reflected light from the pool. “You are.”

“Yeah.”

"I’m sorry.”

He did sound sorry. But he also looked like he was a million miles away from Casey, like he was looking down at him from some shuttle up in space.

Casey tightened his grip. “Talk to me, Danny. What’s going on? If you tell me all of this was for the job, fine, I’ll believe you. But we were doing good, you know? I thought we were. And then you walked away, and I’ve got to be honest with you—I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe it was something I’d done, or—” He sighed. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t get it. I still don’t. So can you tell me, please? Just tell me. Tell me why you left.”

He could feel, from where he’d curled his fingers around the side of Dan’s hand, that Dan’s palms were a little damp. And he looked a little closer now. Still out in space, but maybe more in Casey’s orbit. Maybe even considering coming down to Earth. “I needed a change.” Dan’s voice was low. “That’s it, Casey. I needed to go—somewhere. Anywhere. After Draft Day, and Rebecca, and—everything—” Casey started to speak, but Dan held up a hand, releasing it from Casey’s grasp. “I know you forgave me. I know you did. I’m not doubting that. But it wasn’t about what you felt, Casey. It was about me. I had to figure some things out, and I did, and what I figured out is that I had to go. Somewhere new, somewhere without all the old shit I've been dragging behind me my entire life. You didn’t do anything wrong, I promise you. I just—” Dan closed his eyes for the briefest moment. “I needed a change.”

Casey wanted to sink to the bottom of the blue, blue pool behind him. He wanted to grab Danny and pull him down with him, into the calm and the quiet of the cleansing waters, so that all of this—whatever this was—would be washed away. They could start over, start fresh.

It had never been hard with Danny. Even when they fought, even when Danny was being moody—which was a good deal of the time—Casey could read him. Casey could draw him out. Not this time, though. This time, looking up into Dan’s eyes, Casey had no idea what he was thinking, except that he could tell that Dan was hiding from him. He could tell, from the set of his mouth, from the way his shoulders tensed under his white Oxford shirt, that Danny wasn't telling him the truth. Not all of it, anyway.

Casey stood back up and looked towards the house as the buzz of voices and music floated through the glass, like dispatches from another world. “You want to stay?” Danny asked, his voice soft.

“No.” Casey shoved his hands into his pockets, clearing his throat. “I mean, not unless you do. Still on New York time, you know. I wouldn’t mind hitting the hay.”

Dan studied him a moment, and then got up too. “Okay. Let’s get you to bed then, my not-so-young friend.”


	4. call it off

Casey awoke far too early the next morning, hungover but unable to get back to sleep, since the sun had already been up for hours on the East Coast. He ordered room service and watched _Lethal Weapon 4_ on TV, wishing he could teleport himself back to Manhattan. Dan didn’t want him here, that much was clear. Casey had been a fool to come, to think he could waltz into Dan’s new life and have everything fall back into place, or beg Dan to come back, or do whatever he’d had in mind when he got on that plan. Things had changed. Dan had changed. It had only taken six months for Dan to become a stranger.

He lay back on his bed in only his boxers, thinking of the weeks before Danny left. It hadn’t seemed real, his big L.A. plan, and Casey had perhaps leaned a little too hard into that sense of unreality to bolster his denial. He’d been distracted since the takeover, he knew it. Work had been hectic and Lisa had been more of a pain in the ass than usual, probably to punish Casey for even entertaining the idea of moving to Los Angeles. He and Dan hadn’t seen each other much outside of the office, and then, all too soon, it was time for Dan’s big going away party, which Natalie had planned with meticulous and determined enthusiasm despite the fact that she looked like she wanted to cry every time she brought it up. She’d gotten Dan a cake covered in fake plastic palm trees and little beach chairs, and Dana had started mixing everyone blue margaritas crafted from her own dubious recipe. They stained everyone’s lips and tasted faintly like wintergreen Life Savers, but after downing one or two of them everyone was far too drunk to care.

He and Dan had talked a bit, but Casey couldn’t shake the feeling that Dan was dodging him, always leaving a circle of conversation just as Casey joined it. The talking had turned to dancing, and Dan had started shimmying with Kim, and then it was 3 a.m. and Natalie finally did start crying and Danny had a plane to catch at noon. So he’d said his goodbyes, with lots of long hugs, but when he got to Casey neither of them seemed to know what to say.

Everyone else had mostly drifted away by then, leaving them alone to talk in the half-light of their office. Casey was perched on the edge of his desk while Danny leaned against the doorframe, having just had his last _Sports Night_ heart-to-heart with Isaac. Casey couldn’t quite see his expression with the way the light from the bullpen haloed Danny’s head, making him seem even more like a shadow, like a memory already fading from Casey’s life.

Casey swallowed. “You’re going?”

“I’m going.”

“You need any help? Tomorrow, I mean. Getting stuff together, or getting to the airport, or…?”

“I’m all set.” Danny pressed himself up off the door, taking a step towards Casey. “Got a car picking me up, courtesy of our new corporate overlords. They’re moving my stuff, too.”

“Can’t say I love that they’re helping you leave us.” The words came out a little more biting than he’d intended. “I just mean—we’ll miss you, Danny. _I’ll_ miss you.”

He hadn’t said that yet. After their initial talks about L.A., he hadn’t inserted himself into Dan’s decision-making process. He hadn’t felt he had the right to do so, and Danny hadn’t asked. But Dan had to know, didn’t he? Suddenly, Casey wished he’d said it before. That he’d spent the last few weeks saying it, in case it convinced Danny not to go.

Danny didn’t say anything. He crossed closer to Casey, and held out his arms. Casey stood and hugged him.

They stayed that way for a few moments before Dan pulled away. “I’ll call. Let you know how I’m settling in.”

“You better.” Casey cleared his throat. “And Dana’ll kill you if you don’t visit as much as you can.”

“ _I_ should visit? Listen, I’m the one with the sunshine. You should all be making plans to come to me.”

“Okay.” Casey stuck out his hand, the motion striking him as absurd, except that he wasn’t ready to let Danny go yet, and still wanted to find little ways to hang on. “We will. I promise.”

Danny took his hand, laughing, and shook it. And then, with that, he was gone.

* * *

 

Dan had told Casey he’d pick him up for lunch around 12:30, and that he was planning to invite along Marina, his producer, who knew everything there was to know about the Giants and who had spent her entire life in California, which gave her a laid-back vibe Dan said he liked. “She’s like Dana, if Dana ever discovered reiki. She’s great. You’ll like her.”

The comparison to Dana made Casey worry that Dan’s plan was to see how well Casey and Marina hit it off as more than friends, but that fear dissipated about two minutes after he met Marina in the lobby and she mentioned her live-in girlfriend. She wore her dark hair in an arrangement of small, complicated braids pulled back from her face to show off her nose ring, and Casey couldn’t help but wonder how she’d fared in the relatively buttoned-up world of sports broadcasting, where Dennis Rodman’s fashion choices hadn’t made a dent in the on-air wardrobe. But Marina was behind the camera, and Dan said she was damned good at her job, that she could land an interview with just about anyone, and that she’d been their conduit to the sizeable population of closeted lesbian athletes who wanted to book a show where they were sure questions about their dating lives or winking jokes about their penchant for short haircuts and slacks wouldn’t come up.

They went to a Japanese restaurant that Marina said was her favorite, and she saved Casey from the vast and unfamiliar menu by choosing a platter of specialties for all of them to share. “So, Casey,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows after the waiter walked away, “Dan tells me you showed up out of the blue. From what I hear about Dana Whitaker, she’s not usually keen on letting her anchors out of her sight on such short notice. How’d you swing that?”

Casey glanced at Dan, whose expensive sunglasses were perched on his head. It was the first time Casey had seen his eyes all day. “She, uh—she knows how much I miss Dan. How much we all do. So she told me come out for a few days, and send him our love.” He wanted to bite his tongue on that last phrase—he’d just been echoing Dana’s words—but Dan wasn’t really looking at him anyway. His eyes were fixed on the glass of water he held, like he wasn’t quite listening to Casey, and he looked a touch more worse for wear than Casey thought their drinking last night warranted.

“That’s sweet.” Marina leaned back as the waiter returned with miso soup for all of them. “I’ve always admired her from afar. I mean—professionally. Though I hear she’s pretty cute, too.”

Casey smiled. “She is indeed.”

“Are you two—?”

“Me and Dana? Oh, no. No, no, no. Danny can tell you all about why that would never work, I’m sure.”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t know, I always thought you two crazy kids would get it together in the end.”

Casey opened his mouth, about to tell Dan about the developments with Dana and Calvin, and then realized what a terrible idea that would be while sitting in front of someone who worked for Calvin’s network. So he turned the spotlight onto Marina instead. “So what were you doing before producing Dan’s dream show? Did you always know you wanted to work in sports?”

“Now that’s a story.” Marina launched into her complicated history with sports fandom, from her time as a high school field hockey star in San Francisco to covering soccer for a network in Europe while living in Prague for a year, and Casey could almost ignore how weird Dan was being in the midst of Marina’s tale of smoking hash with the entire Dutch national football team. When Dan got up after they’d eaten to use the restroom, Casey hardly noticed until Marina said, “You must have really missed him, huh?”

“Yeah. We all do. There’s no one like Danny, you know?”

 “I know. I can’t think of anyone who would do a better job with this show. The writing, the looks, the charm—he’s got it all.” She grinned. “I guess that’s why he goes home with someone new every night. Which, as his producer, I would care nothing about, except that I suspect it’s the reason he’s late pretty much four mornings out of five.”

“Dan did always have a way with the ladies.”

She laughed, snorting into her tea. “The ladies! Yeah, right.”

Casey looked up from his own cup at that. Marina must have registered his confusion. “Oh, wait, did he actually date women in New York? I just hadn’t heard him talk about seeing any women here, so I assumed his Kinsey scale skewed closer to six.”

Casey knew his mouth was hanging open in an undignified fashion, but he couldn’t seem to close it, so instead he picked up the hot tea and gulped down as much of it as he could before his tongue started to burn. He was trying to figure out how to reply when Dan returned to the table, sliding back into his seat. “Talking about me?”

Marina nudged him with an elbow. “Casey says you were quite the ladies’ man in New York. I didn’t know you—”

“Hey,” interrupted Casey, his voice uncomfortably loud to his own ears, “I just realized I’ve been in L.A. for nearly twenty-four hours, and I haven’t seen the beach once. How about going to Venice for the afternoon? I remember liking it a lot when Dana and I were here on assignment.”

He hadn’t, particularly—it was a little too dirty and loud—but he desperately wanted to get outside, to walk and process Marina’s revelation. Dan was sleeping with guys. Dan was sleeping with so many guys that Marina hadn’t been aware he slept with women. More, it seemed, had changed in six months than he’d ever imagined.

Both Marina and Danny seemed taken aback by his abrupt pronouncement, but they went along with his plan, piling back into the Camaro, with Casey insisting on taking the backseat while Marina and Dan chatted up front.

He stared out the window at the cars whizzing by under bright blue skies, and tried to figure out why Danny hadn’t told him. He must have known, or guessed, that Marina would say something. Why didn’t he tell Casey himself? What did it mean, Danny’s newfound gayness? _Was_ it newfound? Or had Danny been seeing guys back in New York, seeing guys all this time, and kept it a secret from Casey?

Casey pressed his forehead against the window. Dan and Marina were laughing about some field correspondent they knew, and either the sushi wasn’t sitting well in Casey’s stomach or this news had thrown him off balance, because as they followed the curves of the highway he felt like he might throw up.

He was relieved when they finally reached the beach, and practically leapt out of the car in his effort to draw some fresh air into his lungs. Dan gave him a weird look, but he was past caring. If Danny couldn’t even be bothered to have a conversation this personal with Casey himself, maybe he’d never cared that much about Casey at all.

The thought turned his nausea into a sudden, urgent need to either cry or punch something, and he tamped it down, balling his hands into fists and sticking them into his pockets. “Okay, folks,” he said, using his best just-back-from-commercial voice, “anyone up for ice cream? My treat.”

Marina glanced at Dan, who was staring at Casey as though he’d grown two heads. “There’s a really good fro-yo place if we head down the boardwalk.”

“Lead the way,” said Casey, forcing a smile. Marina started off, with Casey following, and Dan fell into step beside him.

“Are you on cocaine?”

Casey shot him a look. “What?”

“You’re blinking like a million times a minute, and your jarring non sequiturs are making even less sense than usual. Also your face is bright red, dude.” Dan studied him. “Are you having a heart attack? Coke-induced or otherwise?”

Tempting as it was to fall into the banter, Casey couldn’t make himself do it. Marina had gotten a little bit ahead of them, carried along by the crowd. Casey lowered his voice, keeping it just loud enough for Dan to hear him as they walked. “Why didn’t you tell me about the guys, Dan?”

“The guys.”

“The guys.”

Dan blew out a long breath. “What is there to tell?”

“Danny.” Casey’s desire to punch something, anything, was replaced by a pretty specific urge to punch Dan. “Come on. You only date women the entire time I know you, and then you move to L.A. and you’re George Michael all of a sudden?”

“First of all—George Michael? That’s your reference? Secondly—” Casey wanted to point out how ironic it was that Danny was numbering his points in this argument when he’d given Casey shit for it so many times, but kept his mouth shut. “Secondly, you knew. I’d mentioned it before. That I was—bi.”

“No.” Casey shook his head. “You said you found certain men attractive, Danny. In passing. After several drinks. That’s not the same thing.”

“Maybe you just didn’t want to believe it was.”

Casey felt his face getting hotter. “You cannot be pissed at me over this, Dan. You didn’t talk to me. You didn’t tell me. You can’t expect me to just know.” Dan didn’t answer, and Casey wanted to shake him. “And clearly you _were_ hiding it, because you never told me you slept with men, but I show up here and someone you’ve known for six months tells me as much like it’s the number one trivia fact about Dan Rydell.”

“Things are different here.”

“Different how? It’s not like Manhattan is in the middle of the goddamn Bible Belt, Danny. If you were worried about this getting out in New York—if that’s why you were so deep in the closet even your _best friend_ didn’t know it—why do you think L.A.’s any different?”

Dan elbowed his way past a woman in an absurdly large floppy hat to get closer to Casey, walking faster now, his words coming out in a rush. “I’ve got my own show, Casey. It’s just me, now, and Marina, who’s in the same boat, and a lot of talented people who know what they signed up for and would rather work for a guy who’s upfront about his sexual preferences than the hypocritical bigots you find on most sports shows.” He drew a breath, slowing his words down a little. “If the network execs find out, they find out. It doesn’t affect you, or Dana, or Natalie or Jeremy or anyone else. This show is only tied to my brand. There’s no morals clause in my contract, I made sure of that. I can sleep with anyone and smoke all the pot I want.”

That stopped Casey in his tracks. “You’ve been smoking pot?”

“Occasionally.”

Dan was still moving. Casey grabbed his arm, pulling him off to the side of the boardwalk. He’d lost sight of Marina completely.

“What the fuck, Danny.” Casey’s chest was heaving. Dan was staring at him sullenly, the way Charlie had started doing a few months ago, when Casey had begun having ominous visions of what his teenage years might bring. “What is going on with you?”

“What’s going on with _you_? You show up here, out of nowhere, and I’m the one who needs to explain myself? I didn’t ask you to come, Casey. I don’t owe you an explanation, or an apology.”

Casey dropped his hand from Dan’s arm and turned on his heel, walking the opposite direction. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t stay standing in front of Danny one more second feeling the way he was feeling, because it would be Draft Day all over again. No one in the world could push his buttons the way Dan could when Danny dug in his heels and decided to block Casey out. It made him angry, so angry he couldn’t see straight, and it made Dan mean and defensive, and it made both of them say things they wanted to take back the very second the ill-considered words slipped off their tongues.

He kept walking, and after a while he felt sure Dan wasn’t following him. He turned off the boardwalk, onto the sand, and walked to the water, past the tourists and the stoners and the girls sunbathing in shorts and bikini tops. He sat down right at its edge, and he dropped his head between his knees, and he breathed, breathed in and out with measured breaths until his heart stopped racing, until he could think again with something approaching clarity.

Dan was angry with him. Dan was angry, and Casey didn’t have the first clue why. Usually when Danny was mad at him, he could trace the cause back to its murky source, as overblown as Danny’s reaction to the original impetus might be, but he couldn’t figure this one out. Dan had left _him_. Dan might be pissed off that Casey had showed up without warning him, but Casey didn’t think it warranted this level of coldness. And anyway, shouldn’t a person’s reaction to his best friend surprising him with a visit be some degree of happiness? Casey wasn’t asking for elation. He’d just thought, no matter what else was going on, that Danny would be happy to see him.

He groaned, lifting his head. He still had two and a half days left in L.A. Never had he longed so badly to be back in the grimy, gritty embrace of New York, not even that time Dana had sent him to interview that coach at Auburn who kept trying to talk to Casey about embracing his Lord and Savior in the middle of a 110-degree heat wave.

“Enjoying the view?”

He looked up, covering his eyes as he squinted into the sun. Marina was standing over him, hands on her hips. “You tracked me down, huh?”

She sat down beside him on the sand. “I had to. You still owe me a fro-yo.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” He sighed. “And about—all this. I’ll admit that I don’t really know what ‘all this’ entails, but I’ve definitely got the feeling it’s my fault. Or at least that Danny thinks it is.”

Marina drew her knees up to her chest. “You’re the only person I’ve ever heard call him Danny.”

“Yeah.”

“He told me all about you, you know. When he first got out here, I don’t think he talked about anything else. Honestly I was afraid I’d suck at small talk at lunch because I already knew too much about your son and your ex-wife and your hometown and the way you like your steak done.”

Casey looked at her. “If that’s true, why isn’t he glad I’m here?”

She shrugged. “I think he’s…confused.”

“About what?”

“About why you came here.”

Casey pressed his lips into a thin line. Marina watched him for a while.

“Can I ask you something, Casey?”

He nodded, ever so slightly.

“Do _you_ know why you came out here?”

He kept his eyes fixed on the ocean. “Yeah.”

“You should tell him that.”

“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I should.”

“Honey, we’re a little past ‘can’ or ‘should.’ You got on a plane. You showed up. You’ve got to tell him, okay?” Casey glanced at her. “Look, I know this is probably inappropriate for me to even say to you. But I love Dan, and he loves you, and he deserves to know how you really feel about him, even if it’s not exactly what he’s feeling. Even if it doesn’t change a thing, because you live in New York and he lives in L.A. If it was important enough for you to fly here, you should tell him to his face what you’re feeling.”

“How do you—” Casey swallowed. “How do you know what I might be feeling?”

She rolled her eyes. “Casey, I assumed you two had already slept together just from what I’d seen on the air until Dan told me you never have. It’s obvious how you feel about him. And from the way you freaked out when you found out about the dudes he’s been sleeping with, you’re either a virulent homophobe, or you’re in love with him. I’m going to pay you the respect of assuming it’s not the former.”

He closed his eyes. The sound of the waves made him feel like the ground was rocking beneath him, gently but relentlessly. “So what do I do now?”

“We're off tonight. Take him out to dinner and talk to him. Really talk. No evasions, no macho bullshit. Okay? Make him tell you what he’s feeling, but you’ve got to tell him the truth.”

“The truth.”

“The truth, Casey.” She stood, extending a hand. “I’ll even make the reservation, because I’ve got the perfect place in mind. I’ve had five first dates and two necessary break-ups there. It works like a charm every time.”

He took her hand, laughing a little as he got to his feet.


	5. knife going in

If the ride back to the hotel was significantly less awkward than Casey expected, he suspected it was only because he was so emotionally exhausted that he couldn’t be bothered to care about Danny’s icy silences anymore. Dan had been waiting for them back at the car, leaning up against its side with one leg up and arms folded, those damned trendy sunglasses obscuring his eyes. But Dan’s mouth always gave him away, and Casey could see he was still pissed, still twisting it the way he did when he wanted to bite out some scathing remark.

They all got into the car without a saying a word, and Marina turned on an alt rock station. Casey closed his eyes, and when he opened them again they were pulling up at his hotel. He climbed out of the backseat, and Marina got out too, pulling him in for a quick hug.

“Here’s the address.” She produced a business card, printed from recycled paper, from her shoulder bag. _Café Sahel_. “Maybe just take a cab there. I don’t want you guys to kill each other in the Camaro before you even get a chance to talk.”

“Thanks.” He wanted to tell her how much he appreciated her, how she was his West Coast Natalie and Dana all rolled up into one, but he’d just be spouting nonsense. So he walked into the hotel, turning once to wave, noticing how Dan kept his eyes straight ahead, his fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly enough that his knuckles had gone white.

* * *

 

Casey used the cramped hotel gym, took a shower, and passed out on his bed for a couple of hours until the clock radio alarm on the nightstand went off. He got dressed, called down to the front desk to ask them to summon a cab, and tried to resist the urge to raid the mini bar for all the alcohol available before his dinner with Danny.

The restaurant was only a 10-minute drive away, which didn’t give Casey much time to agonize over what he was going to say in the cab, but also delivered him to Café Sahel much sooner than he’d intended. So he sat alone at the candlelit table Marina had reserved and waited for Danny to show, calculating the odds of Dan simply standing him up rather than deal with this in the two days Casey had until he left for New York.

His gaze drifted, and he saw Marina had been right about this place. It was the perfect setting for a serious, private talk: all the tables were nestled in little alcoves, the low lights and the miniature waterfall near his table evoking the feel of a cozy, romantic cavern.

He didn’t know if romantic was what he wanted. He didn’t know if it was what _Danny_ wanted. Marina had seen right through him, and if two women who were clearly far smarter and more perceptive than he was were telling him with ambiguity that he was in love with Dan—well, he probably was. Yet he still hadn’t worked out what that meant, and the revelation about Dan’s love life in L.A. hadn’t clarified the issue. If anything, the information had clouded Casey’s understanding, because clearly Casey had never crossed Dan’s as an option. And if this went somewhere, this thing he was feeling for Dan, it could never work, because he and Danny wouldn’t be figuring this out together. Casey had never even kissed a guy and couldn’t, with any certainty, say that he’d like the experience. Even if Danny somehow had the patience for that kind of naïveté, Casey wouldn’t put him through that, not when Danny could be having a relationship with someone who knew what they were doing.

Casey scanned the menu, deciding on his entrée, and when he looked back up the waiter was leading Danny, who looked a little like a hostage being passed between captors, over to the table. Dan sat down, and Casey shifted in his chair.

“Thanks for coming. I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Marina told me she’d only book soccer coaches for the next month if I didn’t.”

“Wow. Her threats are almost as good as Dana’s.”

“Yeah.” Danny looked down at the table. He looked tired, Casey realized. Really tired. That California glow didn’t seem as stunning in the half-light of Café Sahel’s little grotto.

They ordered tagine dishes and drinks—separate, single glasses of wine, instead of a shared bottle, like they would have chosen in the old days—and as their waiter disappeared around the waterfall, Dan leaned forward on his elbows, his dark eyes intent. “So, in addition to threatening me with soccer coverage, Marina said I should come to dinner to ask you about the real reason you came out here.”

“She did, huh?”

“She did.”

Casey slid his hand across the table, resting his fingers atop Danny’s, suddenly afraid that if he didn’t keep him within reach, Dan might bolt.

“Okay. I’m going to be honest.” Dan didn’t withdraw his hand, which Casey decided to take as a good sign. “I came out here because I have to tell you something. And I didn’t know how to tell you, but Natalie told me I had to tell you, and then Marina told me I had to tell you, and—well, this is me. Telling you.”

Dan stared at him. “You do realize you haven’t actually told me anything, right?”

Casey’s fingers tightened on Danny’s hand. “I know. Because I don’t know how to say this. Danny…I don’t know how to do the show without you.” Dan scoffed, but Casey pressed on. “That’s not the point, though. It’s not just the show. I don’t know how to do anything without you. I don’t know how to be in New York without you. I don’t know how to get up in the morning without knowing I’m going to see you. I don’t know how to write or walk down the street or have lunch or figure out how I’m going to get through the next year. Danny—”

Danny’s face was very still. “Casey—”

“Danny…I think I’m in love with you.”

Dan’s fingers twitched. He drew them back, slowly, out of Casey’s grip, and Casey felt his gut twist. “Danny…”

“Casey. Just—a second.” Danny closed his eyes. “I just need a second. One second. Okay? Please?”

Casey nodded despite the fact that Dan couldn’t see him. The minutes passed. Casey drummed his fingers on the table. “Do you need me here for this, Dan? Or should I come back later?”

Dan opened his eyes again, and Casey couldn’t decipher his expression. “I’m just trying to understand this.”

“Understand me being in love with you.”

“Yeah.”

“What is there to understand?”

Danny leaned forward. “Don’t do that, Casey. There’s a lot to understand. A lot. I mean, do you understand it?”

“Do I understand being in love with you?”

“That’s what I asked, yeah.”

“I…” Marina’s voice echoed in his head. _Tell him the truth_. “No. I don’t understand it. I can’t lie to you, Danny. I don’t know what it means. All I know is that it’s true. It’s what I’m feeling. I mean, I think it’s what I’m feeling, but if you want the truth, I’ve never felt this way before, and it freaked me out so much that I had to get on a plane to come talk to you about it. Which is unfair, I know, but it’s the only thing I could think to do.”

Dan’s face softened. “Okay.” He pressed his palms against the table, back within Casey’s reach. “That’s good. I mean, you telling me that. It’s good.”

They looked at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment. Casey desperately wished Marina, or Natalie, or Abby, or anyone with a broader emotional vocabulary would show up to facilitate this conversation, because he was struggling. “Is there—look, I know I don’t have the right to ask this. And I know I shouldn’t have sprung this on you, and obviously I shouldn’t have flown across the country to do it. But is there any chance—I don’t know, Danny. Is there any chance in hell you feel the same way, even a little? Or am I alone here?”

Danny’s mouth quirked, and Casey watched, disbelieving, as Dan dissolved into nearly silent laughter. “Dan—”

Dan dropped his forehead onto his arms, and held up a finger. “One second, Casey.”

Danny’s back was shaking, and he kept giving little snorts that were muffled by the tablecloth. “Okay, I mean, I know this is absurd, but I do have some skin in the game here, Danny. Can you—”

“I left New York because of you.”

The laughter was gone from Dan’s voice. Casey stared at him.

“What?”

“I left New York because I had feelings for you. Because I had been having feelings for you. For a long time, I think. Maybe the whole time we’ve known each other, because I can’t remember when they started. But when we fought, Abby helped me realize what was really going on. I couldn’t deny it anymore, and I couldn’t deal with it, either.” Dan’s fingers were tugging at the tablecloth. “I can’t be around you, Casey. You drive me crazy. All I want, all I wanted, was for you to feel the same way about me that I felt about you, and I kept doing whatever I could to provoke a reaction. To get a rise out of you, to make me feel like you cared half as much about me as I did about you.”

Casey bit his lip. “Danny…”

Dan stopped him with a hand. “It wasn’t healthy, Casey. It was fucked up. And I was doing it because I felt all kinds of things for you that I couldn’t afford to feel, and because I’d never dealt with the fact that men are more for me than—I don’t know. A college hookup or the occasional locker room blowjob.”

Casey arched an eyebrow. “Which locker rooms are we talking?”

“Not the point.” Dan released the tablecloth. “I needed to work it out, Case. Somewhere new. Everyone at _Sports Night_ knew me too well, or thought they did. It was safe, and it was stifling. I had to go. I’m figuring things out, and it’s going okay.” He smiled, but it looked pained. “Until you showed up. I really felt like I was getting it together, Casey, until I saw you standing in that studio.”

“So that’s what the guys are about. Working that out.”

“More or less, yeah.”

“What about the pot?”

Dan leaned back in his chair. “It’s…” He paused. “It’s not what you think. It’s not a bad thing. And it’s not like I’m smoking a lot. Just a joint, here or there, always with a friend around. Or, you know, a—always with someone around. Not getting high alone, like I used to.” The candlelight played over Dan’s features, casting shadows across his cheeks. “The first time, someone just offered it to me, and I thought: why not? All that time talking with Abby, it made me realize: I didn’t kill Sam. Even pot didn’t kill Sam. That truck killed Sam. And as long as I remained convinced that someone I loved would die the second I put a joint in my mouth, as long as I abstained because of that, I was still punishing myself for his death. Still telling myself it was my fault. So I smoked up, and the world didn’t end. I didn’t have a panic attack. I could look back at that teenage kid smoking dope alone in his room and say, it’s okay, you’re young and dumb but you’re okay. You’re not doing anything wrong. I’d give anything to have Sam back with me now, but he’s gone.”

Dan’s gaze drifted down to the table. “He’s gone. He’s been gone a long time. And me avoiding drugs at all costs was just one more way of hanging on. It’s not like I’m going to do it all the time. I’m not even really a fan of the feeling, anymore. But to know that I could, and that I wouldn’t spiral into guilt like I used to: it helped, Case. It’s a small thing, but it showed me how far I’ve come.”

Casey was quiet, absorbing Dan’s words. He wasn’t completely convinced. Sleeping around, smoking pot again—those didn’t seem like the healthiest ways for Dan to work through his problems, either. But he seemed clear-eyed about the situation, and like he’d considered its ramifications, not like he was just acting on anxious impulses, the way Casey had seen him do so many times before. “Okay.” The waiter appeared with their steaming dishes of spiced meat and vegetables, and they shuffled plates and silverware around for a moment before he went on. “So you’re doing okay. I don’t need to be worried.”

The edges of Dan’s mouth turned up slightly. “You don’t need to be worried.” He started digging into his tagine, and they ate in silence for a few minutes as their conversation played over and over again in Casey’s mind.

So Dan had feelings for him. _Had_ feelings for him. It wasn’t at all clear to Casey how Dan felt about him at this moment. “So…what happens now?”

Dan looked up, scraping the last of the food off his plate. “Now?” He inserted his fork into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Well, the Knicks game is on. Figured we could go watch it at your hotel.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. You got a better idea?”

“I mean, I…” Casey ran a hand through his hair. “I just told you I have feelings for you. Did that register? Do I need to announce it on-air to get your attention?”

“Please don’t. Dana will kill you, and Natalie will assume it’s somehow my fault.” Dan pushed his plate away. “Casey, you’re straight. You’re very straight. You’re so straight you make Jeter look like he’s about to hop up and do the samba at the head of a Pride parade.”

“But I…”

“Case. Have you ever felt this way about anyone else? Any other guy, I mean?”

Casey’s mouth moved without sound for a moment before he spoke. “No. I guess not.”

“Okay.” Dan took a sip of his wine. “Here’s what I think. I left, and you realized you missed me. A lot. I believe that.” A smile played over his lips. “I’m glad to hear it. And there was this stuff between us, these feelings I hadn’t shared, and maybe you picked up on some of that. So somehow or another you got it into your head that you were in love with me. Maybe it’s been too long since you’ve had a good date. Maybe Kim made you watch _Velvet Goldmine_ because she loves the Christian Bale sex scene. Maybe—”

“Natalie.”

Dan slapped the table. “I knew it! The tiny unhinged yenta strikes again.”

“Dan.” Casey tried to keep his voice steady. “I—look, I’m definitely feeling some things. It’s true that I don’t know what they are. But Natalie only pointed out an issue that was already going on, and—I don’t know, Danny. It _feels_ like I’m in love with you.”

“You’re not.”

“Are you sure?”

Dan kept his eyes locked on Casey’s. “Casey, do you think I would have moved across the country if there was any chance you were?”

* * *

For weeks after Danny left New York, Casey kept thinking he saw him around the offices. Just for a second, just long enough for his heart to skip a beat in his chest. Danny, coming around the corner. Hanging out in the bullpen, making Kim laugh. Walking across the set, ready to take his seat at the desk. Like Dan was lurking somewhere just out of Casey’s line of sight, and if Casey turned in time, he’d see him. Danny would laugh then, and tell Casey he’d caught him, that this whole L.A. move had been a prank all along.

But the weeks passed, and then the months, and after a while, Casey stopped thinking he saw Danny at all.


	6. like o, like h

With the tension broken, or at least punctured, the conversation started flowing again. Casey felt like he was finally back with Danny, the old Danny, who admitted how nervous he’d been on those first few solo shows and how much talking him down Marina had done. “I never could have done it without her, Case,” Dan told him as they were finishing their drinks. “I was so scared, doing it without you that first time. I’d never done that, you know? I really didn’t know if I could. But Marina and I connected right away, and just having someone there in the studio I trusted, rooting me on—it made all the difference. It really did.”

They headed back to Casey’s hotel to switch from wine to beer and watch the game in the ornate Art Deco bar downstairs. Voices buzzed all around them as the place filled up with the sleek, coiffed weekend crowd, all dressed in their L.A. best, but once Dan started doing over-the-top play-by-plays in his broadcast voice Casey couldn’t hear anyone else in the room. He jumped in, and they were right back at it.

One beer turned into two. Then three. Then four, then five, and then Casey lost all count. The game ended, and ESPN switched over to interviews and analysis, with Dan providing a nasally lip-synced soundtrack for Jeff Van Gundy that had Casey falling off his stool. The chatter around them rose and ebbed, until it finally hit a distinctly mellow pitch, and Casey glanced around to realize he and Dan were two of the only people left in the bar.

It was close to 3 a.m. Dan met his gaze, blearily. “I believe…I am perhaps unfit to drive.”

“I would concur with that astute assessment.”

“You and your allita—” Dan waved his hand in Casey’s face. “Allita—the thing. With the letters. You and that. Get outta here with that.”

“I, my friend, am the paying guest here.” They’d charged all the drinks to Casey’s room. “I will _not_ get out of here.” Casey’s beer sloshed over the edge of his glass as he gestured to punctuate his point. Maybe he wasn’t that much better off than Dan, despite the fact that his enunciation seemed to have suffered less.

Dan sighed and rolled his eyes, looking to the ceiling for help. “Well, then I will get out of here. In a cab. But if you steal my Camaro, I’ll—” He straightened up and shook his finger at Casey for a couple of seconds, and then slumped back in his chair. “I won’t care, actually. I miss the Volvo.”

He started to get up off his barstool, but Casey put a hand on his arm. “Come on, Dan. Why don’t you crash here?”

“I’m not paying for a room in a city I live in, Casey.”

“No, I mean—” Casey swallowed. This shouldn’t be weird. They’d shared what felt like a hundred hotel rooms in the years they’d known each other. And if Danny didn’t want things to change—didn’t think things _could_ change—then fine. They’d go on as they always had. “Just crash in my room. You can drive your car home in the morning. Otherwise you’re going to have to take a cab all the way back from—from—” He squinted at Dan. “Wait, where is your apartment, anyway?”

Dan’s eyes drifted to a space vaguely to the left of Casey’s head, but Casey couldn’t tell if that was because Dan was being evasive or because he was having trouble focusing. “Dan. Seriously. Stay here. You know getting into a moving vehicle is going to be an excruciating experience right now.”

Dan’s eyes snapped back onto Casey’s face. “An elevator is a moving vehicle.”

“And it is logic like that, Danny” —Casey stood, hauling Dan up with him— “that proves you are far too incapacitated to be let loose on the streets of Los Angeles.”

Danny leaned into him, and Casey inhaled. _Stop it_ , he told himself. Dan smelled like Stella Artois and some kind of minty shampoo that tickled Casey’s nostrils with its sharpness. Casey dragged him forward, toward the elevator bank. “Your make-up artists are going to hate you tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell them it was all your fault.”

“Turning the West Coast against me. That’s positively perfidious, Daniel.”

“I swear, you alitta—alitter—you use two letters that sound the same one more time, and I swear I’m gonna—”

“Here we go!” The doors dinged open, and Casey pushed Dan into the blessedly empty elevator. Dan stumbled, and then recovered enough to glare daggers at Casey while Casey pushed what he hoped was the button for his floor.

It was. He found his room, and pulled Danny in from the corridor before Dan could make any more threats regarding Casey’s linguistic preferences. Dan blinked into the light as Casey switched on the lamps, and then looked at the bed. “We’re sharing?”

Casey blushed. “There’s a pull-out sofa. I can take it.”

“No, no, no.” Dan walked over and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “You paid for this king-sized monstrosity, so you should be sleeping in it.” He collapsed onto the mattress, closing his eyes for a moment, and then cracking one open to peer at Casey. “Were you expecting company? Maybe the entire Lakers cheerleading squad? Because I’m pretty sure they could fit.”

Oh, for the days when all Casey had to worry about was Danny’s Laker girls infatuation. “So…you’ll take the sofa, then?”

Danny kicked off his shoes, lazily, and scooted up on the bed. “I will take this region of the—ooh.” He sat up, fluffing the pillow. “These are nice.” He threw the two excess pillows off the side of the bed and lay down on his belly. “I’ll take Iberia, and you take Siberia, and we’ll go to Liberia…” He yawned and trailed off, his geographical nonsense fading into calm, steady breathing.

Casey stared at him for a moment, and then went to brush his teeth. _It’s not weird_ , he thought as he pulled on boxers and a t-shirt after finishing up in the bathroom. _Danny doesn’t think it’s weird. Don’t make it weird_.

He switched off the lamps and settled down on the bed. Dan didn’t stir. Casey lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, its popcorn pattern still visible in the dim electric light seeping in through the edges of the curtains.

“Case.”

Casey looked over. Dan hadn’t moved, and when he spoke the overstuffed pillow muffled his voice. “Casey, I can hear you thinking.”

“First of all, no, you can’t. Second of all…” Casey blew out a breath. “It’s been a day, Danny. It’s just been… a day.”

Dan groaned, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “You need to learn to turn this” —he leaned over to tap Casey’s forehead— “off. It’s not doing you any good. Give it a rest.”

He started to retreat to his side of the bed, but Casey grabbed his wrist. “Danny.” Casey’s voice sounded low and desperate in his own ears, but he couldn’t help it. “What if—I mean, I can’t know until I know, right? _You_ can’t know until I know. So how do we know?”

Dan stared at him. “Do you have a concussion? Were you secretly drinking absinthe? Because I’ve got to tell you, Case, you’re not making a lick of sen—”

Danny’s words were cut off by Casey’s lips. Before he could think too much about it, Casey had pulled Dan towards him, his fingers still gripping Danny’s wrist, and kissed him, kissed him the way he’d wanted to since he’d seen Danny at his desk in the studio.

Danny was warm and pliable from sleep, and his lips were soft, softer than Casey might have expected, except that he knew how fastidious Dan was about lip scrubs and balms. _Maybe I should have suspected something sooner_ , he considered as he remembered the armory of grooming products Dan kept in Makeup, and then he lost his train of thought completely, because Danny was reaching out to wrap his hand around Casey’s waist, pulling Casey closer, his fingers wandering over Casey’s side, his back, and down to his ass.

 _Okay, so, not straight_ , Casey confirmed as the blood rushed to his cock. _Definitely not straight_.

The sensation of Dan’s lips on his felt familiar in a way Casey didn’t understand. They’d never done this before. Yet somehow he knew exactly where his hands should go, how to pull him close as Casey slid his tongue into Danny’s mouth, how to thread his fingers through Danny’s hair to elicit that first little moan from deep in Danny’s throat, that first sigh that meant  _more, more, more_. He’d watched Danny for over a decade. He knew Danny’s movements and his mannerisms better than his own. He knew Danny’s body, he realized. He knew Danny’s body so well that it felt like exploring a place he’d traced the map of, over and over, but had never set foot until now.

Dan was grabbing now, tugging at Casey’s shirt. They broke apart with a gasp just long enough for Dan to pull it up over Casey’s head, and then Dan was straddling him in one smooth movement, yanking off his own black t-shirt and tossing it across the room. He bent down, cupping Casey’s face in his hands, and ran his tongue over Casey’s collarbone, causing Casey’s hips to lift an inch or two off the bed. “Danny,” he breathed, and his voice sounded foreign to his own ears, the want and lust there something new, something he’d never heard himself voice, not with Lisa, not with Sally, not with anyone.

“Casey,” Danny answered him, kissing his way down Casey’s chest, to his stomach. “Casey.” And then Danny was unbuckling his own belt, without breaking contact with Casey’s lips, with one hand still running over every part of Casey he could reach. How many times had Danny practiced that move, to be able to do it one-handed and half-asleep?

The thought brought some of the reality back to the situation. Danny had barely spoken to Casey for months. Danny had been sleeping with pretty much every other guy in the world instead. Were they really going to do this without figuring out what that meant? Do this drunk, do it—Casey whimpered as Dan’s fingers skated over his hipbone. “Danny,” he said, trying to even out his voice. “Are you sure—I mean, you’re drunk. And you said—” He gasped as Danny backed off of Casey just long enough to work his jeans off, and then Danny was all over him again, both of them naked but for their boxers, bringing back vivid memories of the pants punishment.

“I said you were straight, Casey,” Danny said. “And clearly—” He ran his hand over the bulge in the thin fabric of Casey’s boxers. “I was wrong.”

Casey struggled to breathe. “But, Danny, we still—”

Danny toyed with the waistband of Casey’s boxers. “Do you want me to stop?”

“I—no.”

“Then trust me.” Dan dragged Casey’s boxers off, then leaned across Casey’s chest, slipping his hand between their bodies to curl his fingers around Casey’s cock. Casey let out a hiss, and Dan captured his lips, kissing him for a long moment as he held Casey in his hand. He broke away, and Casey could just make out his eyes in the muted glow, the way Dan was looking at him with deadly seriousness. “I wanted you for so long, Casey. For _so_ long. It was killing me. You are the thing I want most in this world, and you’re in my bed—well, your bed. Well, the hotel’s bed. The point is, I’m not conflicted on this. Okay?” He moved his fist along the shaft of Casey’s cock. “Does it feel like I’m conflicted, Casey?”

“It—does not.” Casey’s voice was breathy, and between the alcohol and the feeling of Dan’s skin on his he was losing track of all his possible objections. “It feels…good. Really, really—” He gulped as Danny picked up the pace. “Really—”

And then Dan slid down Casey’s body, never losing his rhythm, and replaced his hand with his mouth.

Casey groaned, his head knocking back against the pillow with a thump. “Oh my god.” Dan’s mouth was deft, and Casey couldn’t help thinking again about all the practice Danny had gotten at this lately. But hey, if it meant Danny knew exactly how to run his tongue along Casey’s shaft to make heat shoot up Casey’s spine—if it meant Danny had developed this exquisitely timed method for massaging Casey’s balls while varying the suction of his lips—and _god_ , those lips—Casey could come from the thought of those lips alone, of Danny’s mouth, that gorgeous mouth he knew so well, wrapped around his cock—if it meant that Dan was currently giving him the most mind-blowing blow job he’d ever experienced, well, Casey wasn’t going to complain.

He kept not complaining as Danny brought him closer and closer to the edge, his cries of Danny’s name turning into wordless grunts. And then he was there, right there, filling Danny’s mouth as Dan gripped his hips, as Danny took it all, swallowing and sucking as Casey slung his arm across his mouth to keep from yelling, because he didn’t want any fellow hotel guests who may have seen Casey and Dan leave the bar together connecting it to the loud and distinctly male-on-male sex noises coming from room 403.

“Jesus,” he finally whispered, flinging his arm back against the pillows. He was pretty sure it was going to have bite marks from his own mouth in the morning, from where he’d born down to keep from crying out.

Danny crawled back up over his chest. “So… _very_ not straight, then.”

“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“I…” Casey sighed. “I didn’t. I mean, I’d never…I couldn’t be sure. But I guess this proves it, huh?”

“I may require further proof.” Danny’s fingers encircled Casey’s wrist, lightly. “After all, I’m very good at what I do. I’m not sure _anyone_ would object to being the object of my affections. But if you want me to believe you’ve been pining—” Casey thought he heard a hitch there, in Danny’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure. “If you came all the way out here to prove it to me, then—”

Casey got the idea, and let Danny guide his hand to his cock. “My performance may not be as, uh— _inspired_ as yours was, Danny—”

“You don’t have to put on a show.” Danny kissed his neck, just below his ear. “And I’ve sure you’ve had plenty of practice at this.” Casey let his fingers snake around Danny’s shaft, as firmly as he would have held his own, and Danny murmured against his skin. “That’s good, that’s—” Casey pulled, and Danny moaned. “That’s—Case—oh god, Casey. Casey. Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

It didn’t take long before Dan was arching against him, coming in Casey’s hand. “ _God_ ,” Danny breathed into Casey’s ear.

“It’s Casey McCall, actually.”

Dan groaned. “I should have known you’d bring dad jokes into bed.”

“Hey, you were the one who wanted me here.”

Danny lifted his head from the crook of Casey’s neck so he could meet Casey’s eyes. “That I did.” Casey couldn’t quite make out his expression, even though he suspected the light coming in through the curtains might not just be ambient L.A. nightshine, but might actually be the dawning sun. “But—” He yawned, stretching. “I do have a show tomorrow, and if I show up to rundown in the same clothes Marina saw yesterday I’m never going to live it down. So let’s get some sleep.”

He turned on his side, still nestled against Casey, but somehow a little more distant than he’d been a few moments ago. Casey pulled the covers halfway up his chest with the arm that wasn’t around Dan, the adrenaline and alcohol fading, but sleep showing no signs of encroaching. There was something Danny had said. Something Casey had snagged on, but couldn’t stop for, not when Danny was on top of him, when Danny was telling him he wanted this, when Casey was just realizing how much he wanted it too. But there was something—Danny had said something—

 _It was killing me_.

Casey breathed in the darkness. _It was killing me_.

He wasn’t conceited enough to think Danny’s issues revolved around him. Danny had showed up in Casey’s life with plenty of baggage already. But how much of Danny’s self-destruction around Draft Day had to do with this? How long had Dan felt this way, and how much had it defined what he was to Casey? What Casey was to him?

Beside him Danny slept soundly. Casey didn’t have the heart to wake him, even though the need to know felt urgent, felt like a weight on his chest he couldn’t ignore. Instead he stared at the halo of light shining through the curtains, and waited for morning to come.


	7. are you ten years ago

Casey came back into consciousness with a pounding headache. “Ow.” He reached up to massage his temple, and his arm bumped into a solid object. Danny. Still in his bed. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten, exactly, but as all the drunken details of the night before came rushing back to him, he winced. What the hell was Danny going to say when he woke up? What were they supposed to do?

Danny was snoring a little into the crook of his right arm, his left one just barely touching Casey’s stomach. Casey eased up onto the pillow a little bit, staring down at him. God, Danny was a gorgeous man. He couldn’t quite believe he’d never seen it before. But of course he’d never seen Danny quite like this: inches away, serene and sleeping, still a little sweaty from their nighttime exertions, the salty residue they hadn’t bothered to shower away now dried on the sheets.

He debated getting up to use the bathroom, and was about to let his bladder decide the matter for him when Danny snuffled and lifted his head, blinking blearily. “Fuck.” His gaze focused on Casey. “Did I get hit by a truck? I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“I think that’s called having a hangover in your thirties.”

Danny rubbed his eyes, propping himself up on his forearms. “This is one of my stranger ones.”

“Yeah.” Casey’s bodily needs urgently made themselves known. “Yeah. Listen—I know this isn’t ideal timing—but I really, really need to piss. So—just—stay put?”

Danny laughed. “Like I’m going anywhere.” He sprawled back across the bed, squinting at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Except that I have to be at the studio in two hours, so I guess that’s a lie. I should head back to my place.”

“You could shower here.”

“And show up wearing what, your clothes or mine from the day before? Either way, that’s going to get me questions from Marina I’m not sure I currently have the energy to answer.”

“Well, then—let me ride along to your place. I can get a taxi from there to the airport if you don’t want me tagging along to the studio. I still have most of the day to kill.”

Danny hesitated, several beats too long, and Casey pointed at him, biting back the urge to shout _J’accuse_! “I knew it. You got weird.”

Danny pushed himself up on his elbows, scrutinizing Casey. “I got weird when?”

“Last night. When I asked about where you live. You got weird.”

“Case…” Danny blew out a breath, falling back on the bed. “Fine. Come with me. But first, use the bathroom before you cause yourself permanent kidney damage.”

They managed to get themselves out the door a few minutes later, groaning all the way, Casey too tired to do the customary tidying up he always did before leaving hotel rooms (even though he knew the maids would strip everything down later). He stopped by the front desk to check out while Danny availed himself of the lobby coffee, and they made their way to Danny’s Camaro with Styrofoam cups in hand, Casey scowling into the relentless L.A. sunshine and envying Danny’s too-cool-for-school sunglasses.

“So where _do_ you live?” Casey asked as Danny started driving. “Is it embarrassing? Is it a frat house at USC? Does QVN not pay you enough to maintain a proper Angeleno lifestyle?”

The crack about pay slipped out of his mouth before he could think better of it, but Dan, luckily, didn’t take it amiss. “I live in Beverly Grove,” he said as he steered them onto the 110. “Far from the studio, but I like the distance. Downtown L.A.’s no fun.”

“And Beverly Grove is?”

“West Hollywood is.”

“Ah.”

They settled into silence, and Casey watched the miles of highway pass beneath their wheels. They should talk. He knew they should talk. But this was nice, this morning-after banter that didn’t feel nearly as stilted as he might have expected it to, and he wasn’t willing to break the spell just yet.

Danny’s apartment building was sleek and modern, all snaking curves and silver-blue windows meant to echo California’s waves. They pulled into the small garage and Casey followed Dan up the stairwell to his fifth-story pad, panting by the time they reached the top.

“Don’t…you have…an elevator?”

Dan glanced over his shoulder as he unlocked his door. “Still not a fan of the gym, I take it?”

“Hey, you used to blow it off with me. But—” Casey swallowed, images of various stretches of Dan’s muscled skin flashing through his mind. “But, uh, it seems like you’ve been going a lot lately.”

Dan pushed the door open. “It’s L.A. Healthy living is what we do here.”

Inside, the apartment was glossy and anonymous, with sharp lines and white fixtures everywhere. Dan had hung up a framed photograph of Shea Stadium, but other than that and some scattered magazines and books on the frosted glass coffee table, the place looked like Dan had scarcely touched it.

Casey settled onto the ivory couch, suppressing the urge to grab some cleaning products and tackle the smudge he could see on its far left side. “It’s nice.”

Dan shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t spend a ton of time here, to be honest.”

 _So how many nights do you spend somewhere else?_ Casey immediately wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut. Dan had the right to do whatever he wanted, out here. He didn’t owe Casey anything.

“I’m going to jump in the shower.” Dan headed towards a door presumably leading to the bathroom. “Make yourself at home. There’s…well, there’s nothing in the fridge. But that’s the latest _Sports Illustrated_ on the table.”

“Thanks.” Casey obligingly picked up the issue and started leafing through, not really paying attention to its contents. He felt awkward, out of place in a way he had never felt all the times he hung out in Dan’s apartment in New York. Maybe it was just the effect of the night before.

He heard the water start to run, and an image of Danny standing naked in the steam surfaced in his mind, unbidden. What would Danny do if Casey slipped into the shower with him? Ran his hands through Dan’s wet hair, over his bare chest, down to his—           

Casey sighed, throwing the magazine down. Every part of him ached to go grab Danny and throw him against the nearest surface to pick up where they’d left off last night, but he knew, at the same time, it was a terrible idea. They had to talk. They actually had to talk, because if Casey went back to New York without them hashing this out, he’d be just as much of a mess as he’d been before he left. And Natalie would never let him hear the end of it.

The water shut off, and a few moments later Casey saw Danny slip out of the bathroom into the bedroom, his green towel low around his waist. _Get dressed_ , Casey willed him, gritting his teeth. If Dan emerged from the bedroom with anything less than full coverage, Casey wasn’t sure his resolve to put aside sex for painful emotional growth was up to the challenge.

Fortunately, Dan came back into the living room wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, holding a pair of socks balled up in his hand. He sat on the couch next to Casey and started pulling them on, and Casey watched him a moment before forcing out the question on the tip of his tongue.

“Why didn’t you want me to know where you lived?”

Danny stopped midway through rolling his right sock up his ankle. “What?”

“You wouldn’t tell me what neighborhood you lived in. And I don’t even have your address, I’m realizing. What’s the deal, Danny? Were you afraid I’d, I don’t know—”

“Show up unannounced from the opposite coast?” Dan sat back on the couch, rubbing his forehead with one hand.

“Was that it? Really?”

Dan looked over at him. “No. Not really.”

“Why, then?” Dan’s gaze flickered, and Casey could see the internal debate unfolding in his brain. “Tell me the truth. Come on, Danny. Just tell me.”

Danny released a long breath, dropping his hand to his thigh. “Okay. You want to know the truth?” He turned to face Casey fully, pulling one leg up onto the couch. “You weren’t supposed to be here. This was supposed to be a Casey-free zone. I wouldn’t even watch _Sports Night_ here, you know? I’ve been sticking around the studio to watch it, every night.”

“Every night?” Casey raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have models to get to?”

Dan ignored his jab. “Of course, every night. Do you know how much I hate the thought of all of you doing it without me? You, and Dan, and Natalie and Jeremy, and Isaac…the first time I watched and I wasn’t sitting right there next to you, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I’d seen you with substitutes before. But this was permanent. And all I could think was, what the fuck have I done?"

"I wondered that too, if you want the truth."

That particular bait Dan didn't ignore. "You want truth, Case?" He locked eyes with Casey. "I was falling apart. Draft Day wasn't--it was the tip of the iceberg. Everything going on in my head, everything up here--" He pointed his finger against his skull, like it was a gun. "I was losing it. Losing it, because I couldn't stand having you so close, and so far away at the same time. Couldn't stand the fact that I cared  _so much_ about what you thought, how you treated me, and you just thought of me as--your good friend Dan. The partner you'd brought along on your rise to the top, who would never do what you did quite as well as you."

His words rang with that old bitterness, shone with the sharpness of the hatchet they'd buried just about a year ago, on Passover. Today might even be the anniversary of the end of that fight, of their reconciliation. One year. It was unbelievable, how much the world could shift in the space of those three hundred and sixty five days.

"I'm sorry I made you felt like that. I am. You were never--that was never all you were to me, Danny."

"Maybe not. But did you know that? Could you have admitted it, to yourself or to me?" Danny held his gaze, and Casey looked away. "You were never going to tell me. There were moments, you know? When you told me about what really happened in Dallas. When you told me you couldn't imagine the last ten years without me. But then you'd go back to acting like nothing had changed, like the status quo was good enough for you, and I would just fucking wither. You didn't see it, I didn't always let you see it, but God--the times you were halfway in touch with your feelings were almost worse than the times you weren't."

Casey could feel the color rising in his cheeks, whether in shame or in anger, he couldn't quite tell. He closed his eyes, counting out a few steady beats, slowing down his breathing. It was a trick he'd been using to deal with Charlie and his increasing prepubescent mood swings, one Lisa had picked up in some parenting book.  _Take a moment. Don't speak in haste. Listen, and consider, and respond with love_. 

He and Danny were both men of principle, which tended to leave them standing on principle alone while everything burned down around them. He wanted to stop doing that. Wanted to stop looking at the smoking ashes of his life and wondering where he'd gone so wrong.

"I'm sorry," he said again, more quietly, this time. He opened his eyes, and saw Danny staring at him. "I am. I really--I wasn't fair to you, Danny. For a long, long time there. I know. I can't go back and change it. But know that I know."

Danny nodded. "Yeah. We weren't good to each other, Case. And I loved the hell out of you. Even at your worst, which was pretty damn bad."  _Loved_. Past tense. Casey couldn't help noting that, and a lump rose in his throat. "I loved you, and that became all I was, because I was spending all my days with you, and all my emotional energy on you, and every distraction stopped working after awhile."

"Even Rebecca." The words were out of his mouth before Casey could stop himself, but Danny only sighed.

"Even Rebecca." 

"So...you thought you needed to leave."

"I  _did_ have to leave. Not just because of us, though that was a lot of it. But more than that, I had to know that I could make it on my own. That I  _would_ make it on my own. I had to try to do it without you, Casey. I had to give it a shot. You were right. I could do it, and I needed to try, because I would have always wondered, otherwise. If you were the only thing propping me up. If I could make it without you, not just in sports, but in—” Dan waved his hand. “Life. Everything I really didn’t know.”

“And now you know.”

“Yeah.”

Casey felt the tears burning at the edge of his eyes, but he wasn’t going to break down in front of Danny. It wouldn’t be fair. He put both hands on his knees, pushing himself up from the sofa. “Okay. Well. I’m glad, Danny. I’m really glad, and I should go, because—”

“Hey.” Danny stopped him, grabbing his arm, pulling him back down. “Let me finish. Here’s what I know. I can do it without you. I can survive. Get through the days. I don’t wonder how I’m going to make it out of bed. But here’s the other thing I know: I’m never so excited about those days as I used to be about spending days with you. Nothing’s as funny. No one says something about the ’75 Cincinnati Reds that still has me thinking about it a week later.” Danny moved his hand down Casey’s arm, letting his fingers rest on Casey’s wrist. “But more than all of that, Case, no one makes me feel the way you do. Even before we slept together, there was that thing. That—whatever it is, that connects us like this. I’ve been trying my damnedest to sleep my way through the male population of Los Angeles, and what I know is, what I’m sure of, is that no one else can compare.” Danny dropped his eyes. “No one. No matter what I do. No matter how many hours I spend at the gym trying to outrun the memory of you, no matter what else I do—nothing works. It’s you, Casey. It’s always been you.”

Casey’s breath caught. “Danny, I…” He shook his head, trying to find the words. “I know. I know, okay? So we should do this. Be this. What we really are to each other. Can we try? Can we make this more…permanent?”

Danny raised his gaze to Casey’s face. “And how would that work? I give up my show? You show up for a weekend and whisk me away from L.A.?”

“You could still have your show back in New York. We could still do it back to back. You wouldn’t have to come back to _Sports Night_. I mean, you could—I’d be thrilled if you did—but if you want your own show, you know you can have it. You’ve showed QVN what you can do.” He threaded his fingers through Danny’s. “You don’t have to give everything up. I don’t want you to. But I do…want to be with you. And I can’t leave Charlie. You know I can’t. That hasn’t changed.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“So?”

“Case, I just…” Dan flexed his fingers in Casey’s grip. “To be honest, I’m not sure you’ve thought this through. This is new to you, and you think you’re in the throes of love, and I don’t know, I’ve seen you do this before, and that scares me.” Casey swallowed the impulse to argue, to defend his past actions and his admittedly spotty record with Dana, and made himself sit there and listen. “I know you, Casey. You get it into your head that things are a certain way. You get…fixated. But it doesn’t mean—”

“It does mean.” Casey could hear the pleading note in his own voice, and it made him feel weak, weak and ashamed. “It means I’m in love with you. I’m sure. I want this.”

“And if we fall apart?” Dan searched his face. “Draft Day was a nuclear event, Case. Can you imagine—if we’d been _fucking_ at the time, do you even know—”

“Danny.” Casey grabbed his shoulders. “Stop. Stop. Yes, there are a million ways this could go wrong. Yes, you could end up hating my very guts, because God knows that’s happened before.” His fingers tightened. His heart was pounding out of control. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. You know why? Because we’ve been through so much together, Danny— _so_ much—and we’re still here. Even this. Even with this, as scared as I was, as confused, I still went to find you. That’s all we have to do.” He pulled Danny to him, nestling Danny’s head against his chest. “Just find me. If I get lost, if you do—find me. That’s all you have to do.”

Danny was jerking against him. Little hiccupping motions. It took Casey a minute to figure out what was going on.

“You ass,” Danny choked out, his voice muffled against Casey’s skin. “I haven’t cried over you since I got here. Not once. And now you’re here for 48 hours, and—” He lifted his head. “I was doing so well in Casey McCall rehab. Getting you out of my system, going cold turkey. Now look at me. I’m relapsing. If I have to start all over again now, it’ll take me another six months before I can—” He let out a sigh. “Fuck. You know I want you, Casey. You _know_ I do. But we’ve got to be careful. Because I’m still not sure I can tell you no. I’m not sure I’ll stop you if you push me too far. I’m not sure I’ll want to. So just—” He took Casey’s hand, stroking small circles in the hollow at the base of his thumb. “Watch out for me, okay? Promise me. If you can do that, maybe we can do this.”

Casey looked at him a long, long time, the weight of Danny’s words leaden in his chest. Danny meant it, he knew. He would do whatever Casey wanted him to do. And while the thought thrilled Casey, sent electricity coursing down his spine, to the tips of his fingers and toes, it scared him, too. Because he knew Danny, and he knew how dark things could get. He knew what Danny looked like, standing at the edge of the brink. And he knew—he remembered, with broadcast quality clarity, what it looked like when Danny jumped.

He sucked in the air between his teeth. “I can’t promise you that I won’t hurt you.” Danny’s expression started to shutter, and Casey rushed on. “No one can promise you that. But I will be careful, Danny. I’ll watch out for you, as much as I know how to. And—I’ll learn. I’ll get better at this. I know I haven’t always medaled in healthy relationships—” Danny snorted, and Casey shot him a look. “But I’m willing to try. For you, I want to. I’d—I’d learn anything you need me to, Danny. Anything. I want to make this work more than I want anything else in the world.”

Danny’s eyes were dark, fathomless. Casey waited, trying to tamp down the despair uncoiling in his gut.

If Danny said no—if Danny sent him away—he’d unravel. It would be like losing Lisa, or maybe worse. Because he and Lisa, at least, had played out all their acts. That relationship needed badly to end, and by its close they were both mostly relieved, exhausted and bitter and shells of their old selves, but each glad to see the other go. He and Danny, though: they had so much more to discover about each other. This whole world Casey had never seen. The world where Danny was his partner, in the full sense of the word. It was so close he could touch it, and yet: if Danny said no, that future, those possibilities, would dissolve with a single word.

“Okay.”

Casey was so consumed by his own spiraling thoughts that he didn’t register the meaning. “What?”

“Okay.” Danny was smiling now, slightly, the mesmerizing twist of his mouth curving upwards. “I believe you. You want to do this. I want to do this. I still think we might be doing one of the stupidest things we’ve ever done, but I’m not sure I care.” He leaned in, cupping Casey’s face for a brief, sweet kiss. “As my New Age California therapist would say, don't send happiness away when it shows up at your door. I'm trying to stop doing that. It’s not easy. But hey—here you are.”

“Here I am.” Casey pressed a kiss to Danny’s neck. “And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not. And I know I—look, I’m terrible at this. That’s pretty clear. But you call me on your shit. You always have. So if we can just go into this with the appropriate mix of enthusiasm and trepidation, I think—Danny, I really think we’ll be okay.”

Danny laughed, drawing Casey close. “You really are terrible at this.”

“Thanks.”

“But I probably should have—I don’t know, maybe I should have said something. Years ago. I didn't think you could take it, though.”

Casey nuzzled his cheek against Danny’s face. “I don’t think I could have. Without you leaving…God. It hurt like hell, Danny. But it made things pretty damn clear. I’m not sure what else would have done the job.”

Danny sighed. “You never were one for simple emotional revelations.”

“No.”

“Okay.” Danny drew back, looking Casey in the eye, his fingers trembling a little as he squeezed Casey’s arms. “So what do we do now?”


	8. epilogue, part i: felt you in my life before I ever thought to

Casey sipped his wine, trying not to gulp it in one go. He’d given dozens of speeches, at award ceremonies, at colleges, at conferences across the country. _Never_ _given one quite like this, though_ , he thought, and swallowed as much of the wine as he could gracefully get down before setting it down on the table beside him. As he did, he couldn’t help but glance over at Danny, who looked as nervous as Casey felt, his fingers wrapped tightly around the stem of his own glass, the knuckles nearly white.

“Thank you all for coming.” The obligatory greeting left his lips like a benediction, and he struggled to loosen up, rolling his shoulders once, taking a slow, steady look around the room. Dana, seated beside Sam Donovan. Marina and her partner Karmen. Natalie, with Jeremy and the kids, who weren’t really kids anymore, who had grown up into poised, more than slightly nerdy teens who shared their parents’ dark hair and rapid-fire speech patterns. Charlie, who hadn’t been a kid for a long time, who gave Casey a subtle thumbs up from down the head table. There was an empty chair beside him, right at the end, and though Casey hadn’t talked to Danny or the planner about it, he knew Dan had left it vacant to honor Isaac. They’d gotten to the point where they could more or less read each other’s minds, which was sometimes glorious, transcendent, everything he’d ever wanted in a shared life and partnership—and was, on other notable occasions, irritating as hell.

“I’m not going to tell you how long ago it was when I met Danny, because he still has a television career, and according to his biography he’s somehow managed to remain 40 years old for more than half a decade.” Dan mock-glared at him from down the table and the room cracked up. The tension left Casey’s shoulders, and he breathed. These were his friends. These were his people. This was his wedding.

“Dan came to intern at a show I was doing for a few months in Newark in mphm-teen-mmphty-mph—” Casey muffled the year into his hand, earning more laughs. “We hit it off right away, despite his absurd opinions on how the Phillies managed to win the World Series. Here’s a hint: he thought it had way more to do with natural talent than the liberal application of amphetamines. Even with that serious moral failing, though, it was clear that this kid—this nineteen-year-old kid, who was badly in need of a haircut and someone to tell him acid washed jeans had never been cool—this kid was on his way to the top. He was funny, he was charming, and he wrote better than anyone else on the staff, with the obvious exception of me.”

Danny hadn’t been there long, that fall in Newark. He wouldn’t have made any more of an impression than the other interns if not for the fact that Casey had given him a thorny assignment writing an advance obit to keep on file for notoriously cantankerous sportscaster Howard Cosell, who was in his seventies at the time. He fully expected to have to rewrite the piece once Danny had done all the research, but Dan had instead turned in some of the best copy Casey had ever seen, turning the piece into a pithy yet somehow sweeping tale of race, Judaism, and the legacy of Muhammed Ali. He’d looked down at the neatly typed page, disbelieving (there wasn’t even anything to _copyedit_ , not a single comma out of place), and then looked up at Danny, who was standing there with a slow, spreading grin. Danny knew how good he was, even then. He doubted it, doubted it all the time, doubted it completely on his darkest days. But deep down, he knew he was good, and ever since that day in the studio in the late eighties, Casey had known it too.

“I realized I had two choices: decide to hate this guy and do everything in my power to sabotage him, or ask him to work with me. Sabotage seemed like a lot of work, and besides—once I got to know him, I couldn’t imagine kicking Danny out of my life. He went back to Dartmouth at the end of the internship, but we kept in touch. I gave him leads on other jobs at other stations, and we both bounced around the exciting world of local sports coverage for a while, but in the end he came to work with me. At Lone Star Sports, in a city where the barbecue is a lot more palatable than the politics. We went on the air a little over two decades ago, when Danny was 15.” Another round of chuckles.

“I gave up a lot, to work with Danny.” Casey made himself keep looking ahead, because if he looked over at Danny now—if he admitted that yeah, he probably should have known this was not just Platonic male friendship when he gave up his own network slot and effectively ruined his marriage for a chance to work by Danny’s side—he might lose it. And Dana would never let him live it down if his first tears came _this_ early in the speech. “I gave up a lot, and every bit was worth it. Danny was the best, my best friend, the best co-writer and co-anchor I could have asked for. We were in synch from day one. First broadcast, November 23 rd. Our anniversary: only one of the many to come.”

Casey paused for a long sip of wine, scanning the faces before him. “So that’s how we started out, as partners. Spending days and nights together, talking, traveling, hanging out, all the time. Choosing to work in a shared office that put us in the closest physical proximity possible, and still somehow considering ourselves only vaguely gay.” Dana’s laugh rang out above the others, and Casey smiled. “Those were some of the best years of my life, working on _Sports Night_. We were a family. We still are. We’ve expanded” —here he gestured to Natalie and Jeremy and their brood of three— “and we’ve lost people we loved. Isaac and Esther aren’t with us today, but I know we all wish they could be. We miss them both, more and more with every passing year. Isaac was a giant, the heart of our little show. For a while there, we were on top of the world.”

“It wasn’t always easy. Live TV is no picnic, folks. We got through it, though. We got through the frozen turkeys falling from the ceiling, the ghost of Thespis, and Sam Donovan.” Sam rolled his eyes. “We fought, and we made up, and with the liberal application of blue margaritas we made it through. We even survived long enough for a QVN buyout, and I thought we’d be doing our act for years to come, every night from 11 to 12.”

“But then Danny left.” He raised his eyes, chancing a glance down the table, and caught Danny’s gaze, noting the crooked press of his mouth that Casey knew now, from years of experience, meant he was trying not to cry. “And I broke down. I didn’t know what was happening to me until a little bird—” Here he glanced meaningfully at Natalie, who, instead of answering with a polite tweet, performed a one-handed whistle, drawing cheers from her table. “Until a whooping crane told me that I was exhibiting all of the symptoms of lovesickness and that I was not, perhaps, as heterosexual as I had previously believed myself to be.”

Natalie had been the first person he called when he landed in New York after his trip to L.A. “You were right,” he’d said, the minute she picked up the phone. “You were right. We’re—listen, can you get away from the studio for half-an-hour? I’m not sure I can narrate all this to proper effect over the phone.”

They’d met at an Indian restaurant that mostly did delivery, and was all but empty at 5 p.m. on a Sunday. Casey had wheeled his suitcase in and Natalie had tackled him immediately, springing up from her table to give him a rib-crushing hug. “Tell me everything. Right now.”

“Everything” boiled down to this: he and Danny were going to give it a try. By the time Casey touched down at JFK, he still couldn’t say for sure what that meant, but the way Danny had kissed him before the cab came to pick Casey up at the door—the way he’d hung onto Casey’s leather jacket, like maybe if he held on tight enough, Casey wouldn’t go—those desperate touches Casey could still feel on his skin had convinced him. Whatever this was, Danny was right there with him.

“I went to see Danny in L.A.” Casey’s eyes landed on Marina’s as he pushed on with his speech, and she smiled. She’d moved back to the Bay Area a few years ago, and she and Karmen had a beautiful house in Larkspur Danny and Casey had stayed in a few times. “I showed up unannounced, which, as it turns out, is not the best way to start a mature, healthy conversation about your relationship. But with a little help from our friends—one friend in particular—we sat down for dinner one night, and we talked things out. And kept talking. And then—well—” His cheeks pinked, and Natalie naturally couldn’t restrain herself from wolf whistling. “Thanks so much for that, Hurley.”

He cleared his throat. “ _Anyway_. Danny and I realized we felt the same way about each other. That we were in love, or something like it. I thought it was love, back then. I thought I knew what it meant to feel like someone was so deeply a part of you that you couldn’t fathom functioning without them. That’s what I felt when Danny left, when I found myself alone for the first time in a long time and realized I didn’t know how to make it through my days. But I had no idea what love was, not back then. Danny--” His voice cracked. “Danny’s the one who taught me. How to open myself up to that kind of love, the kind that lasts. The kind that deepens, and doesn’t fade, with every passing day. The kind that makes you forget you were ever alone, because this is life, and the only way to live it, with this partner you trust and cherish and can't keep your hands off of right by your side.”

“It wasn’t always easy.” He heard a wave of light laughs go through the room at that moment and smiled. “Some of you may call that an understatement. We’d figured out we had feelings for each other, but we had one small problem: we were still living on opposite coasts.”

That year had been hell. His divorce from Lisa had been nothing compared to the pain of knowing Danny was out there in L.A., wanting Casey just as much as Casey wanted him, and not being able to touch him, to talk without a time difference and conflicting schedules and long-distance charges between them. Natalie had understood and run interference with Dana on Casey’s worst days, but he still felt wrung-out, zombified, like they might as well put a cardboard cutout at the desk and pre-record his banter with whatever utterly forgettable co-anchor they were trying out that week.

It had gotten better when they’d hired Sylvia Martinez, who was so effervescently charming that she could have aced a screen test with a brick wall. It had also quickly become clear that, between her gay younger brother and her fondness for drag shows in the Village, Sylvia wouldn’t bat an eye at Casey’s newly expanded persuasion, but he knew telling her before Dana would be a death sentence if Dana ever found out.

And so, when Danny officially turned down his _Sports Daily_ contract, when he’d come back to New York for the fourth time and said, “Two more months, Case. Two more months. We can do this, we can,” and kissed him like it was the last time (because it felt like the last time every time that year) before walking out the door, Casey decided it was time to tell Dana. He’d waited for a relatively quiet time the next day, and made his way to her office, opting against bringing Natalie as a buffer. He didn’t want her to get caught in the crossfire if Dana didn’t take it well, and besides, he’d developed enough emotional maturity to realize this was a conversation he and Dana should have alone. Just about enough, anyway.

* * *

 “What’s up?” Dana wasn’t fully focused on him when he sat down in front of her desk, still shuffling papers while trying to get a piece of tape that was stuck to her index finger off her hand. Casey cleared his throat, willing himself to remain in the chair instead of bolting before Dana realized the gravity of what he was about to say.

“It’s about Danny.”

That got her attention. She laid down her stack of notes from Natalie, looking straight at Casey. “Okay. What about Danny?”

“He’s coming home.”

Dana lowered her glasses. “He’s coming home.”

“Yeah.”

“Permanently?”

“Yeah. In a couple of months.”

“He’s—why? Not that I wouldn’t love to have Danny back—I would—but he’s got his own show. His own fans. Sunshine for days. Why come back to New York and give all that up?”

Casey took a deep breath. _Don’t run_ , he told himself. _Don’t run_. “Because of me.”

Dana’s eyes didn’t leave his. “Because of you.”

“Because of me.”

She let out a small sound. “Oh.” She sank down, elbows on the desk. “So you’re—I mean, you must be—”

Casey’s fingers tightened reflexively. “In L.A., we—well, when I was out there, we—”

She held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Casey was the first to speak. “You don’t seem that surprised.”

That got a laugh out of her, pained as it was. “Nobody’s surprised, Casey. I mean, Danny’s been in love with you for years. That’s obvious.” She adjusted her glasses, like he was a specimen in a lab and she was trying to get a clearer look. “But you—I thought you were straight, so you didn’t see it, or didn’t want to see it. I had no idea you—”

“I didn’t either.” Casey leaned forward. “It was a shock to me too, Dana. I swear. And there was nothing going on when you and I—when we had our thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I—look, I know you’re probably worried about the show, but Dan and I have talked about it. We’re not coming out, not now. Maybe down the line. I’ve thought—Danny still wants to do TV, but I might want to do something else. Eventually.”

She looked a little like she might cry. “You’d give up TV. For Danny.”

“Not— _for_ him, exactly, but we were ever to go public—look, you know it would be simpler if only one of us was actively on the air—”

“I can’t, uh—” Dana stood up, wiping something out of her eye. “I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Dana—”

“I really can’t, Casey.” She tapped her stack of papers on the desk once, straightening them. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go talk to Isaac.” She headed past him, toward the door, and then turned. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

“No.” Danny wanted to tell Isaac himself, in person. Casey knew he was more nervous about that than he was about coming out to his dad, who thought Danny had given up men when he’d outgrown other forms of teenage rebellion.

“Okay. Okay.”

And then she was gone. She’d made sure to avoid any opportunity for Casey to get her alone for at least a week. He’d given up on trying to talk to her about it, and they’d returned to the fraught state that had marked certain earlier periods of their relationship, except without the frisson of sexual tension that used to make it halfway bearable.

She’d come around. Not for months, though. Not until Danny was back, and Isaac knew, and Sylvia knew, and she’d adjusted to the idea. And then, like a dour deus ex machina, Sam Donovan had returned, resolving Dana’s issues with Casey and Dan by taking up all of the scant extra time she had for romantic dramatics. This time Sam had stuck around, and he and Dana were still going strong, squabbling and playing multi-level mind games Casey couldn’t pretend to wrap his mind around, but still in love, and living in Brooklyn Heights with two dogs and no kids and their own wedding anniversary coming up, nine years ago this September.

* * *

 “Danny came to New York to visit, and I went to L.A. as often as I could, but it wasn’t enough. Those of you who suffered through us crying on your shoulders: we salute you. Those of you who provided us liquor—we appreciate you even more.”

It wasn’t the distance only that did it. That they maybe could have handled. It was more than that. It was Danny’s issues, and Casey’s quick temper and even quicker tongue, and the fact that every time they were in L.A. together, they seemed to run into someone Danny slept with during his first six months in the city, because Marina hadn’t exaggerated when it came to post-show habits. There were a lot of guys. There were _a lot_ of guys, and Danny wasn’t exactly able to go out of the town incognito.

* * *

The first time it happened, Casey brushed it off. Coincidence. The guy took the hint pretty fast anyway, though he didn’t seem to pick up to the fact that Casey and Danny were together. The second guy either didn’t pick up on it or didn’t care, and they had to change restaurants to escape from him continuing to drop by their table. The third guy _definitely_ didn’t care, and by that time Casey was dividing the number of full days he’d spent in L.A. by guys he’d met that Danny had fucked and coming up with a disturbingly high number, so Danny had to haul him bodily out of the bar before Casey punched the guy square in his upsettingly camera-ready face.

“ _Case_.” Danny had pulled him into a cab, digging his fingers into Casey’s thighs. “Calm down. I barely remember that guy’s name.”

“And you think that makes it better?”

“I just mean—”

“I know.” They’d talked about this. They’d talked it to death. Danny had been free to do what he wanted when he moved to L.A. Casey got that. He did. But when confronted with the actual aftermath of Danny’s liaisons—the cute guys flirting with him left and right, the ones who were either picking up a vibe or had been in Danny’s bed a few months back—it was hard to maintain any kind of mature, objective stance on the situation.

“Look, I—” Danny sighed. “Clearly I didn’t think this situation was going to arise when I first moved out here. Okay? I was in a strange place. And I don’t regret it, but I know dealing with it must suck. I do.”

“Yeah.” Casey leaned back, his head against the seat. “Especially since I spent the six months you were gone not getting laid at all.”

“Why not? Did Sally get called back to Themyscira with the other Amazons?”

“I will strangle you with my bare hands, I swear to God.”

“Kidding.” Danny squeezed his leg. “We’re okay, though, right? This doesn’t freak you out? More than the normal amount of freaking out you do about everything, I mean.”

“We’re fine.” The words sounded sharper than he meant them. “We’re—we’re good. We are. But don’t you think it’s weird that they never seem to realize I’m not just your ex-co-anchor?”

“Do you want them to know? Because we said—”

“It’s not that I want them to know, it’s that—” Casey thumped his head against the seat. “With you, there’s a vibe. It’s not just guys you’ve slept with. It was that waiter at Dan Tana’s, and that guy at the beach, and your mailman—”

Dan blushed. “That one’s probably my fault. I did once make a joke about packages that may have been—uh—misinterpreted.”

“Sure, but why does that never happen to me?” Casey knew he was veering dangerously close to whining, but it had been bugging him. Now that he could see everything there was to love about Danny—now that he found it impossible to keep his eyes off Dan, when he was onscreen, when he was across the room, when he was right in front of Casey’s face—he realized how many other people could see it too. It scared him. Here, next to Dan, he could reassure himself, reach out and grab Danny’s hand, convince himself that he and Danny were crazy about each other and no exes or old one-night stands or overly friendly fans were going to get in the way of that.

But. But. Back in New York, in his empty apartment, with only Danny’s show to keep him company, his thoughts always started to spiral. He’d be watching Dan, watching the way he laughed and joked and charmed his guests, and he’d think: _What the hell is he doing with me_? He’d have a beer, or two, and the little voice in his head started to get worse. Danny hadn’t cheated on anyone as long as Casey had known him. _But then, you didn’t even know he slept with men. So how well do you know him, really_?

They’d fought about it, by phone. They’d had hours of hashing it out. They’d slammed the occasional door, but their time together was so precious, so brief in those months that they’d always managed to pull it together. Casey had caved, admitting he was being unreasonable, or Danny had, apologized for whatever acerbic remark he’d made as they sniped at each other. They were okay. Casey kept telling himself. They were okay. They’d be okay. If they could just live through the distance, through the end of Danny’s contract, they’d make it.

He kept telling himself that, alone in his bed, that whole year long.

Danny moved closer, looking into Casey’s eyes with utter seriousness. “Do you want the truth?”

“About why you’re the toast of the L.A. gay scene and I’m the stale bread? Yeah.”

Dan bit his lip, trying to keep from laughing. “It’s the way you dress, babe.”

“Oh my god, Danny.”

“Seriously! You dress like your mom ordered your clothes out of a catalogue.”

“Natalie picked out these clothes!”

Dan quirked an eyebrow. “Casey, the first step to picking up guys is probably picking out your own clothes.”

“I don’t want to pick up guys!”

“No?”

“No. I just want—” Casey moved his hand to cover Danny’s. “I want you to want me. That’s all. But I get afraid sometimes, because you have all these—options.”

“Leaving aside the Cheap Trick reference for a second—” Danny leaned in, and this time the look in his eyes was sincere. “Case, you know I want you. Only you. Those guys don’t matter, they really don’t. You’re always the one I’m taking home. For—” Danny cleared his throat, his eyes cutting away from Casey in the sudden way they sometimes did. “For as long as you’ll let me.”

“ _Danny_.” Casey curled his fingers around Danny’s palm. They’d never said it in so many words, but he’d tried to make it clear what this was for him. Not an experiment. Not a fluke. Not something that, short of the apocalypse or sudden and radical personality changes, he could ever imagine ending at all. “Forever, Danny. I want to be the guy you take home from bars forever.”

Danny laughed, his eyes meeting Casey’s once more. “Okay. Deal. You’re my eternal hook-up.”

“Thank you. That’s all I’m asking.”

“ _All_ you’re asking?”

“Well, when we get home” —Casey dropped his voice, glancing up at the cab driver, who luckily had been blasting bad pop music ever since they’d climbed in— “I may ask for a little more.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Danny licked his lips. “I knew there was a reason I’d picked you up. Because it definitely wasn’t your fashion sense.”

Casey thwacked him on the arm. Danny laughed again, falling back against Casey’s shoulder. _He means it_ , Casey thought, chanting it to himself like a mantra. _He means it. He wants you. He means it. He wants you. Only you_.

It was easy to believe, with Danny warm and joyful beside him. It was harder, harder and harder, every time Casey stepped on the plane to fly to a place that no longer felt like home.

* * *

“It was a hard year. For both of us. We nearly didn’t make it through.”

Even uttering those words now scared him. He could remember the uncertainty, the aching and angst and hellish scheduling of trips and calls like it was yesterday. He almost gave up a dozen times. How could he ask Danny to give up his show, when it became clear QVN wasn’t going to keep two live New York sports shows on their roster? How could they make this work, when the odds seemed firmly stacked against them?

“Through it all, though, I kept thinking: if I walk away now, I will regret it for the rest of my life. If I don’t see this through—if I don’t wait, wait until we’re back in the same city, at least—I’ll wonder, until the day I die, how this story might have gone.” He reached out for his wine, taking a few moments for another long, steadying sip. “There wasn’t a choice. Not ever, not really. Hell, when Danny left _Sports Night_ , I couldn’t stand it more than a few months before I jumped on a plane to go across the country and get him back. It wouldn’t have mattered where we were, how long we went without seeing each other. We were meant to be together. I never really believed in soul mates, or fate, before Danny and I ended up in each other’s lives. I thought he was my best friend, and he is. That, and so much more.”

All eyes were on him. All these people had stood by his side, by Danny’s side, while they worked it out. While Casey finally took Danny’s advice (which was more of an ultimatum) and went to therapy. While they navigated their way around what this meant for their careers. While they worked out the baggage from their years of friendship, and finally got to a place where all those little and not-so-little resentments and mistakes were cleared from the slate, and they were suddenly in a relationship that was all about the present, about Danny making waffles with way too much syrup on them in the morning and Casey helping him edit the script for his new MSNBC gig and arguing over clues in the Sunday crossword together. And then it was five years, and Danny moved into Casey’s place, and then ten, and they did tasteful _Vanity Fair_ interview confirming the rumors that had been swirling around them for years, and then they were closing in on fifteen when the world shifted, in a way neither of them expected, and Casey found himself faced with a choice.


	9. epilogue, part ii: relief next to me

Danny had delivered him the news, though not in person. Casey was home at the time, immersed in research for his next biography, a tome on gay Los Angeles outfielder Glenn Burke to follow up on his critically acclaimed volume on Billie Jean King. He hadn’t set out to become the chronicler of the history of queer athletes, exactly, but as his writing career had taken shape he’d found himself drawn to the stories of people like him, people who had lived double lives for part or all of their sports careers. He’d taken the phone off the hook, as was his custom when he was in research mode, and had grazed on the leftovers in the fridge whenever his rumbling stomach reminded him that he couldn’t actually pore over his books and notes for hours without sustenance.

He was happy in his new career, in the flexibility it offered him, in the ability to work the apartment or from whatever coffee shop or hotel lobby he might choose that day. The stress and hustle of live television had lost a lot of its charm once Danny had gone, and Casey remembered that what he really loved was the writing, the digging down into obscure facts and sentence structures and synthesizing it all into a profound and cogent whole.

So he’d worked all day, and then he’d taken a break to watch _Minute by Minute with Dan Rydell_ on MSNBC. He’d always thought the title had a vaguely soap opera sound, but Danny made it work: he kept pace with the breathless, frantic speed of 24/7 breaking news culture while always delivering nuanced perspectives on the political disaster of the moment. He’d been with MSNBC for years now, and it suited him: by the time they came out as a couple Casey had been off the air for years, and Dan’s fans were already a pretty progressive bunch.

Casey had missed the intro, so he sat through commercials for yogurt and health insurance before Danny’s face flashed back on the screen. “And now, let’s delve into our biggest story of the night: _Obergefell v. Hodges_. Today, the highest court in the nation found that the U.S. Constitution requires states to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex, making marriage equality officially—after decades of litigation and activism—the law of the land.”

Danny’s mouth kept moving, but Casey couldn’t hear him anymore. He dove for his cell phone, which he’d left on the other side of the coffee table. Seventeen missed calls. Most from Danny, one from Natalie, and at least two from Charlie.

“It’s a day of celebration. It’s a day of victory for the many couples whose rights have gone unrecognized, whose unions have been shrouded in secrecy and unnecessary shame. And it’s an affirmation of this simple fact: that marriage is a fundamental right. The right to live with your partner, to share what they share, to remain by their bedside in sickness and travel through the world together in health. It’s the right to love openly, and with the full protection of the law.” Danny’s voice held the barest tremor. His viewers wouldn’t have heard it, but Casey did. “Today, many of us long denied that dream lived to see it realized. Today, if you’ll grant me just a moment of sappiness here, was a resounding victory for love.”

 

* * *

 

“Danny and I made a life together long before our full legal rights as a couple were recognized. I never thought I’d get married again, not after dealing with divorce, and Dan has a healthy dread of all things institutional.”

Casey had actually invited Lisa to the reception, though she’d demurred, whether for her own sake or for Danny’s, he couldn’t quite be sure. She and Danny had developed a kind of camaraderie over the years, bonding largely over making fun of Casey’s musical tastes at various family gatherings. “But Danny and I have always been partners. In every way. It took us a while to work that out. It took _me_ a while to work that out. Once I got there, though, I wasn’t ever going to let him go.”

 

* * *

 

They’d never really talked about marriage. Even after the decision came down, they didn’t talk about it. Oh, they talked about the ruling, picking apart Kennedy’s statement, going back through the cases that had lined up like dominoes to bring the court to this point, analyzing what it meant for same-sex marriage on a global scale and the LGBTQ community as a whole. But what it meant for them: that was a topic they danced around. Casey had been skittish about the topic of marriage ever since Lisa. And Danny reminded him at every opportunity that this monumental change didn’t cover everyone, didn’t include the many queer families and people whose relationships and identities still didn’t fit into the mold of marriage. They shared the mortgage on an apartment, and a savings account, and every second of their lives that they weren’t working together. That was good. That was enough. It had been enough for nearly fifteen years.

But in the months after the settling of the cases—the months of footage of happy couples rolling in, in courthouses across the country—Casey couldn’t help feeling a pang. He’d _liked_ being married. He’d liked it up until the bitter, terrible end, and even then he’d missed the surety of that bond, that assurance that someone else in this world belonged to him, and he to them. He and Danny had that, he knew. But to put a ring on Danny’s finger—to declare, in front of their family and friends, that what they had was ‘til death did them part—that idea appealed to him. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it, and then Christmas and Hanukkah rolled around, and he and Danny left New York for their brief vacation in L.A.

They hadn’t been back for years. The couple of times Danny had gone out there for work on his own, Casey felt like he was holding his breath the whole time, certain that Danny would be snatched back into the sunny void. That he’d remember his Los Angeles heyday and decide that domestic life with Casey couldn’t possibly measure up to the freedom and excitement of those six months he’d sampled all of California’s considerable delights unimpeded. Danny always came back, though, and Casey had mostly gotten to a point where he could let his paranoia and insecurity go. Mostly. Although he did end up calling Danny more on those trips than he did on any other, and they already talked a _lot_.

One of the producers on _Minute by Minute_ had a beach house in Malibu that he’d offered to Danny for the holidays. With the presidential election coming up next year, Dan was keen to get any downtime in that he could, and Casey had grudgingly admitted that a beachfront stay when New York was experiencing the bitter cold of December sounded pretty good. Charlie was off doing graduate research in Germany, and Dan’s parents had never extended the invitation for him to bring Casey home for the holidays. So: sunshine. Sleeping in. Blue waves and white beaches and no meetings. The minute they’d gotten there, Dan had locked his smartwatch in the safe in the study and told Casey to punish him severely if Casey found him anywhere near the infernal device.

They’d done nothing but lounge and swim the first few days, and Casey had tried not to think about the question he kept almost blurting out to Danny. If they were going to discuss the idea of marriage, after all these years, they needed to have a calm, rational hashing out of the pros and cons. They’d gotten good at logistics, at planning without fighting, a skill that had eluded them in the early days. Their partnership didn’t need another contract, if Danny didn’t want it. They’d talk about it like adults, and if Danny told Casey marriage wasn’t something he wanted, Casey would let the question go.

At least that’s what Casey told himself, right up to their final night in town.

He’d decided to take Danny out to dinner, and while poring over the options on Yelp, a familiar listing caught his eye. Café Sahel, still there after all these years. From the photos, it looked like they hadn’t updated the interior at all: it was still the same ancient little grotto, complete with candlelit and generous glasses of wine. Casey booked the table by the waterfall.

There was a time Dan might have taken the gesture amiss, but they were past all that now. They could walk back through their old lives without indulging in emotional tourism, without treading over landmines and triggering long-settled feuds. Dan didn’t recognize the place until they stepped inside, but then he cracked up, falling against Casey’s shoulder. “Did Marina make you take me here this time? Are you breaking up with me? Because that’s really going to influence how much alcohol I order.”

“I’m pretty sure they don’t let Marina in here anymore,” Casey told Dan as the waiter led them to their secluded table. “It sounds like she made a scene. Several, in fact.”

Dan settled into his chair, unfolding his napkin. “I’m pretty sure this place is _all_ scenes.” He peered through the moss hanging above the artificial waterfall. “I can see at least three couples making out from right here.”

“Not _three_.”

“Those booths are happening, man! That’s where we should be.”

“You don’t recognize the table?”

Dan gave a wry smile, a little hard to see in the firelight. “Of course I do, Case.” He leaned back. “It’s sweet. Although I’m kind of scared it’s going to turn into _This Is Your Life_.”

“Pretty much the opposite. If we’d never gotten dinner here, you might still living in L.A.”

“If we’d never gotten dinner here, you might never have gotten laid again.”

Casey picked up the menu and held it directly in front of his face, creating a wall between him and Dan. “You know, on second thought, maybe I’m going to break up with you here after all.”

Twenty minutes later, after Dan playing an aggressive game of footsie with him while Casey tried to order lamb tagine from the waiter and the steady emptying of the bottle of wine they’d ordered between them, Casey was finding it hard to hold his tongue. It felt like no time at all since they’d sat here across from one another, and confessed that they were feeling love, or lust, or a mix, but definitely not something two ostensibly straight dudes in sports should be feeling, ever. And all the years since then, all the days—even the hardest ones—they’d been so much better, so much fuller and more vivid than those lost years with Lisa, than even their years working on _Sports Night_. There was no match for this kind of partnership, and Casey wanted to keep it that way for life.

“Dan…” Casey tipped his wineglass up to his lips, taking a small sip of liquid courage. “I’ve been thinking.”

“That seems unlike you.”

“Shut up.” Casey set his glass back down. “I’ve been having…thoughts. About the court case this summer. About, you know…getting married. Again.”

Dan’s face was unreadable in the shadowing light. “Thoughts.”

“Yeah.”

“Thoughts, like, we might—”

“Yeah.”

Dan sat perfectly still for a moment, and then reach across the table to clasp Casey’s hand. “Are you—you’re serious, right? We’re having the conversation?”

“There’s a conversation?”

“Of course there’s a conversation, there’s always been a conversation. But we couldn’t, and then we could but not everywhere, and now—” Danny had leaned forward enough that Casey could see the spark in his eyes. “Now—”

Casey swallowed, feeling the pulse of Danny’s heartbeat against his fingers. “Now—” He drew a breath. “Now we can. And I don’t—look, we don’t _need_ to, Danny. It’s not about legitimizing this, or because we can. It’s—” He, who rarely struggled for words, found it hard to convey the magnitude of what he was trying to say. Every cliché that sprang to his lips sounded like a bad pop song. _You’re my everything_. _You’re the love of my life_. _You’re my soulmate, and I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time_. “It’s because you’re my partner, and I always want you by my side. Through whatever comes. We’ve seen the worst in each other, and the best, and I love the hell out of you, Danny. More than I thought I could ever love someone, other than my own kid. The first time I got married, I didn’t know what it was. I was young and dumb, and I didn’t understand what I was getting into. Now I do.” Danny laughed at that, but his eyes never left Casey’s face. “I want you to be my husband. I want to stand up there, in front of our family and friends—okay, mostly friends—and tell them how I feel about you. How there’s no one else I could imagine having built my life with. I mean, I started building a life with you before I even knew that’s what I was doing. I gave up _Late Night_ just to stay with you. I—I loved you then, Danny, even if I didn’t know it, and I’ve fallen more in love with you since the day I realized I did.”

Dan was giving him one of those quintessential Danny looks. Like Casey was staring at the glassy surface of a lake and trying to guess the coming weather. He held his breath. He’d learned the signs over the years. The tells that meant Danny was feeling something so big it was nearly uncontainable, and wouldn’t give the slightest hint of what it was away. Until he kissed Casey, that is, or broke down or cried, or shouted, which he did rarely, but to devastating effect.

Danny blinked, a couple of times, and that’s when Casey saw the tears. “Danny…”

“I…yes.”

“Yes?”

“If you want to—if you’re asking—”

“I’m asking.”

“Then yes.”

“We’re—”

“Yes.”

“ _Danny_ …”

“For the love of God, Casey, get the check. Right now.”

 

* * *

 

Casey relayed the ending anecdote of how they seemed so frantic to escape the restaurant that their waiter had asked if their car was being stolen, and omitted the fact that they’d fucked each other’s brains out once they reached the Malibu beach house, that they’d barely made it inside (and in fact he’d had Dan’s clothes halfway off before they got in the door, and had to sheepishly go retrieve Dan’s shirt and jacket from the pile he’d left on the porch the next morning). Natalie, who knew the whole story, smirked as Casey wrapped up, and Casey couldn’t chance a look down the table at Dan, who might send him blushing.

“Look, I know it’s not customary to give a toast at your own wedding. But when I got to page twenty-five of writing my vows, Danny suggested that perhaps I needed some additional airtime for expressing my feelings. So: a toast. To all of you, our friends, who are really our family, who have stood by us in bad times and good, who have celebrated and mourned with us. This partnership of ours owes everything to you. Cheers.” He lifted the glass of champagne he’d set next to his wine, and all of their guests toasted with him, their clinking and cries of congratulations echoing across the room.

“And to my new husband—” Casey’s breath caught. “To Danny. I love you. You know that. So much. And I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner. I want you to know—” He couldn’t help turning ever so slightly to meet Danny’s gaze, marveling at how the force of it could still floor him, after all this time. He slipped a hand into his pocket, closing his hands around the object there. “I just want you to know—”

Strains of song, expertly cued up by Jeremy, poured through the room. Casey whipped the sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and threw them on just in time to start lip-syncing. “Every time I look into your lovely eyes—” The room erupted in cheers. “I see a love that money just can’t buy…”

Danny had gone from looking teary-eyed to like he might expire of hysterics. Casey started boogieing away from the podium, down the table, towards Dan. “One look—from you—I drift—awaaay—I pray—that you—are here—to staaay…”

He pulled Dan up onto his feet, and Danny fell against him, laughing. “Roy Orbison? Really?”

“Anything you want—” Casey wiggled the glasses. “You got it.” He dragged Dan towards the dance floor, shaking his hips all the way. “Anything you need—you got it.” He dropped to his knees, to raucous applause from the crowd. “Anything at all, you got it, baaaaaaaaaby.”

 

* * *

 

_Every time I hold you, I begin to understand_

_Everything about you tells me I'm your man_

_I live my life to be with you_

_No one can do the things you do_

_Anything you want, you got it_

_Anything you need, you got it_

_Anything at all, you got it_

_Baby_

 

* * *

 

 

It was a couple of hours later when Dan and Casey were finally able to sneak out. No cheesy sparklers, no big goodbye: Dana would almost certainly start messily crying and Jeremy would start giving a heartfelt speech about the history and evolution of marriage and they’d be stuck there until at least 3 a.m. So they left, Dan sliding his fingers down Casey’s arm to grab his hand and signal with a subtle tug that he was ready to get out of there.

Casey was more than ready. He’d watched Dan’s cheeks grow ever more flushed with wine, his tie coming undone as he accepted hugs and dances and well wishes. Casey’s desire to push Dan up against the most convenient wall and strip him naked hadn’t diminished in the intervening years since they’d first gotten together. He supposed that was the advantage of twelve years of foreplay. They had over a decade of repressed sexual tension on which to draw.

The elevator was blessedly empty as they rode it up to the top floor of the hotel, to the honeymoon suite. Casey pulled Dan in for a kiss as soon as the doors closed, wrapping his arms around his waist. He felt Dan’s breath in his ear. “Did you bring the glasses? Are we about to do some José Feliciano roleplay?”

Casey drew back. “Do you want to get lucky on your wedding night?”

“I do.”

“Then shut up.” He kissed him again, and kept kissing him until the doors dinged open. “Come on.”

They made it through the door somehow, even though Casey was having trouble wrangling the keycard and Dan at the same time. They stumbled into the room, and Casey wasted no time laying Danny out on the bed, undoing his finely tailored shirt button by button in between deep, lingering kisses. Dan shivered. He was sensitive—always had been—and Casey could feel the goosebumps rising on Dan’s skin at Casey’s touch.

“Guess I finally made an honest man of you,” Casey murmured, easing the shirt off Danny’s shoulders. Dan sat up on his elbows to toss it across the room, and then tackled Casey for another round of kisses, these ones more urgent, with Danny nipping and tugging at his lower lip.

“Please, Case.” Danny’s voice held the faintest hint of a whine. “Fuck me. I really, _really_ need you to fuck me.”

Casey let his fingers glide over the bare skin of Dan’s back. “I don’t know, Danny. You sure you’re not too tired from doing the Macarena with Dana? Maybe you need your sleep.”

Dan growled at that, actually _growled_ , and shoved Casey backwards onto the mattress, straddling him in one swift motion. Casey felt himself harden, and he could tell from the look on Danny’s face that he felt it too. “Uh-huh,” Dan said, rocking his pelvis against Casey’s hips. “Well, if you need your rest, old man, that’s your loss.”

Casey groaned. “Okay, you got me, you got me.” He leaned up, slinging an arm around Dan’s waist to draw him down for a kiss. “How about we get the rest of these clothes off?”

Their expensive wedding clothes, carefully coordinated by Natalie (and Dan, who took his shoe choices super seriously), got tossed in random corners of the room as they both sought to uncover more skin. When finally they’d stripped down to nothing, Casey grasped Dan by the hips and shifted him onto his stomach. He began to lick his way down Dan’s back, pausing to sink his teeth into Danny’s remarkably fine ass. Danny hadn’t kicked his gym habit when he’d moved back east, and he was still in fantastic shape, which shamed Casey into using the treadmill enough that he didn’t look too bad himself. He ran a hand up Dan’s legs, dragging his fingers over the soft skin of Dan’s inner thighs, just lightly grazing his scrotum. “Casey…” Dan ground out, both a warning and a plea, and Casey grinned.

“Okay, okay. Stay right there.” He crawled up the bed to reach into the drawer of the nightstand, having had the foresight to stash necessary wedding night supplies there. He pulled out a bottle of lube and sat back on his knees, his ass against the back of Dan’s legs, and squirted some of the liquid onto his fingers, rubbing the tips together to warm them up. Danny sighed impatiently. “You’re killing me here, Case.”

“Haste makes waste, Daniel.”

“God. Remind me why I’m doing this with you again?”

“Because” —Casey slid his hand down the small of Dan’s back, to the cleft between his cheeks— “it feels really, really good.”

Dan gasped as Casey pressed in, spreading the lube over Danny’s entrance with his fingers. He pumped some more out onto his palm to coat his erect cock, and raked his eyes over the Danny buffet laid out before him. Something wasn’t right, though. If this was going to be their first fuck as a married couple, after all these years, he wanted to see Dan’s face as he entered him.

“Babe.” He gave Danny’s ass a smack. “Flip over.”

Danny obliged, wriggling his way onto his back as Casey lifted his hips. “You missed my pretty face?”

“Something like that.” Casey leaned across Danny to kiss him, then shifted his weight into his shoulders, angling himself into a better position. Danny’s hips rose to meet him, and he eased his way into Danny with some guidance from Dan’s grasping hand. “Yes—right—there.” Dan’s eyes fluttered shut as he drew his hand up to cover his own cock, in the scant space between his body and Casey’s. “God, Case, that feels amazing.”

“Glad we’ve been practicing.” Casey’s breathing got heavier as he began to thrust harder, caught up in the unconscious rhythm he and Dan had always shared. “I think we’re really nailing— _ah_ —this wedding night thing.”

Dan gritted his teeth. “Not…the time…for puns.”

Casey gripped Dan’s upper arms, using them for leverage and to hold Danny down, to push even deeper. Danny cried out, the grinding of his hips against Casey’s growing ever more frantic. “Fuck.” His eyes, which had been squeezed shut, flew open. “Fuck, Case. You’re so good. You’re so good. You’re so—fucking— _good—_ ”

The muscles of Casey’s arms burned with effort, but he kept up his sure, steady pace. Dan liked to build to mutual orgasm, and they’d spent a number of sweaty nights testing just how far they could push themselves in the build-up so that the release, when it came, was utterly shattering, leaving them half-incoherent and utterly spent.

He didn’t have the patience for that tonight, though. He wanted to see Danny come beneath him, wanted to feel the moment they both let go. So he dug his fingernails into Danny’s biceps, lowering himself a couple of inches for the kind of biting, brutal kiss he knew drove Danny wild. Danny moaned, and Casey could feel Dan’s cock pressing into his stomach, could feel the quick, increasingly erratic motion of Danny’s hand, working its way from shaft to base. “I’m close, Case. I’m—”

“Danny—”

“Casey—”

“ _Danny_ —”

“Casey, Casey, _Casey_ —fuck—”

And then they were there, spurting against one another, a hot wet entanglement of lips and limbs, with no way of telling where one of them ended, and the other began.

 

* * *

 

That night Casey lay awake, lazy and contented, for a long time after Danny drifted off to sleep. He could see it all, everything that had brought them to this moment, playing like a movie in his mind: Danny’s internship, a million years ago. _Lone Star_. _Sports Night_. Seders, and bad fights, and heartfelt confessions, and that lifeline, that knowledge, way deep down long before he’d named it, that he was Danny’s, and Danny was his.

He turned a little on his side, pressing a kiss to the top of Danny’s head, closing his eyes and curling up around the brilliant, messy, utterly magnificent man he’d chosen to walk alongside for the rest of his life.


End file.
